The 10 Most Remarkable Design Firms of 2014

Of all the design firms we covered in 2014, these 10 stood out.

Who does design serve? What meaning and value lie behind it? In our design section, QDaily keeps coming back to these two questions.

Among the brands, studios and practices we follow, some use architecture to measure the relationship between people and cities, some use branding and packaging to test what design means for business, and some use products to reshape how people live. Here are 10 companies that spent the past year trying to make our lives better through design, and a look back at the beauty they brought to the world this year, along with, in some cases, the controversy.

Snøhetta: Beyond architecture, clever work in interiors and graphic design

The Norwegian practice Snøhetta started out in architecture and has many acclaimed buildings to its name: the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, which made its reputation, as well as the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site in New York and the Norwegian National Opera.

Yet the Snøhetta work that drew the most attention in 2014 was not a building. It was the new series of Norwegian banknotes it designed, due in 2017.

Snøhetta named the design "The Beauty of Boundaries." It sets out to break with the stock elements of traditional banknotes, such as famous buildings and portraits of great men. In their place it uses a series of pixelated cube patterns that evoke the coastline, the horizon and advancing waves. In the design team's words, "this is the visual language of our time."

In December, Snøhetta produced new work in interior design: the 100th store worldwide of the Australian organic skincare brand Aesop, in Oslo.

Skincare shops usually stress polish. Snøhetta instead uncovered materials and wall textures that had been hidden or covered over in a 19th-century space, and gave the Aesop Oslo concept store a raw, natural character. Ten intersecting arched vaults, paired with exposed brick walls, faintly recall an 18th- or 19th-century Orthodox church or monastery and give the room a sense of age.

In architecture, its main field, Snøhetta also tried a good deal that was new this year. In the Norwegian town of Larvik, it worked with The Research Center on Zero Emission Buildings to develop the ZEB Pilot House.

A sloping roof clad in photovoltaic panels works together with geothermal energy, so the house produces more energy than it needs, with enough left over to power an electric car. To meet the zero-emission standard, Snøhetta also used building-integrated technology that eliminates carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels altogether. The design earned the ZEB Pilot House a nomination for the 2015 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award.

Snøhetta is headquartered in Oslo, but this practice, which brings together designers from many countries, has not confined itself to the box of so-called Nordic architecture. This year it helped the state of Hawaii prepare a concept design for its bid to host the Obama Presidential Library, and it joined five other independent design teams in proposing a master plan for Oslo's new government quarter.

Snøhetta already carries real weight in Norwegian design. But it keeps moving forward, and it won the 2014 Oslo Innovation Award. The jury praised its "forward-looking and broad understanding of innovation and development."

Li Xiaodong Atelier: Building among mountains and water

In 2014, the Moriyama RAIC International Prize brought the architect Li Xiaodong back into public view.

The 84-year-old Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama launched the prize this year with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Foundation, and Li's three-year-old Liyuan Library became its first winner. Another of his works, which won the UK's Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award in 2009 and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2010, is also a library: the Bridge School in Pinghe County, Fujian.

Just as the press coverage was pouring in, another of Li's buildings set in a mountain valley, The Screen, was quietly completed.

From a small bridge over a stream in a Hakka village, to a village in a valley outside Beijing, to Dichen Valley in the Jiulong Mountains near Ningbo, Li's studio has gone on building one house after another among mountains and water. Li explains: "Building in the city is lonely. Everyone does their own thing, and no house has much to do with its surroundings."

The houses he builds in villages, by contrast, all engage with everything around them.

The Bridge School, built among Fujian's earthen tulou and over a stream, is wrapped in fine strips of eucalyptus wood. Its earthy yellow blends with the tulou; there is no showy detailing, and the whole building seems to have grown out of the bridge.

In the Wisdom Valley at Jiaojiehe Village, Yanqi Town, in Beijing's outlying Huairou District, the Liyuan Library is the only man-made structure. It stands with its back to the hills and its face to the water. Its main structure of glass and steel is softened by an irregular cladding of firewood sticks. The sticks change color with the seasons along with the surrounding hills, as if the building had reached an understanding with nature.

The Screen, in Dichen Valley in the Jiulong Mountains outside Ningbo, works the same way. Its facade is clad in a local slate that turns, when wet with rain, a color close to that of the mountains, as if in conversation with its surroundings.

Whatever it builds, Li's studio is asking how people and nature can live together in peace. In an interview with the independent platform Archiposition in the summer of 2014, Li said he was working on several projects that are spatially very pure. We can expect more surprises in the new year.

Nendo: Solving problems through design, with a touch of Japanese Zen

In 2014 the Japanese studio Nendo was as prolific as ever.

It released 45 works over the year, mostly in industrial and interior design. What surprised us was not the number but that, at such a pace, the studio could still slow down and work through every detail.

"Giving people a small '!' moment." That is what Nendo did this year, and what it has always aimed to do.

Last year Nendo made 17 products for its own stationery brand, by | n. The team took things you might associate with wearing a shirt, such as ties, sweaters, glasses and buttons, as design cues, and in their hands a plain white shirt took on nine different looks. For umbrellas, Nendo started from what an umbrella has to do: one design hides the cover inside the handle, so you pull it out when you need it and cannot lose it; another has a forked handle that lets the umbrella stand on its own without leaning on anything. There were also Snap, glasses with detachable snap-on parts; a fabric bag that doubles as gift wrapping; three-dimensional rubber bands; and a flip pen that works two ways. In many of these details and functional touches, you feel Nendo's care the moment you see them.

Nendo's clients this year also included big names such as Camper, Starbucks, Toshiba, Häagen-Dazs, Tod's, Nissin and Shu Uemura. For Shu Uemura's TSUYA skin skincare line, Nendo worked the qualities the brand wanted to convey, skin made smooth, soft and translucent, into the packaging, where ripples like those on the surface of water neatly express the idea that "beauty comes from within." The special Christmas cakes it designed for Häagen-Dazs look like a small winter village, little chocolate houses packed close together; one glance is enough to catch the festive mood. Nendo even tried footwear this year, a field it rarely enters, designing the Beetle shoe for the Spanish brand Camper, light in texture with retractable laces.

Beyond products, Nendo designed an art installation for the clothing brand COS during the Milan furniture fair in April. It used the sculptural space to dye, in different colors, white shirts threaded through a frame, and this simple frame gives viewers a strong sense of space.

Its store designs for the Japanese fashion brand BEIGE and for its own brand, by | n, push Japanese minimalism to the limit. The first is a concept store combining clothing retail, a bookshop and a gallery, where empty areas in the space open up more ways to display goods vertically. The second uses bare concrete floors and walls, and every counter is built of natural wood finished with a white gradient paint, so the fit-out looks unfinished. This fits what Nendo's founder Oki Sato has said: "Surprises are hidden everywhere in life."

(The BEIGE store)

(The by | n store)

MAD Architects: Where has Ma Yansong put his Shanshui City idea to work?

As founder, Ma Yansong is MAD Architects' star and its calling card. This year, with his new book Shanshui City, Ma and his firm were all over the media, talking up their vision for the cities of the future.

The title might suggest a book only about mountains and water (shanshui), but what Ma really wants to discuss is people, and how they live in cities. Take two of MAD's major works this year: the apartment block at 71 Via Boncompagni in Rome and Hutong Bubble 32.

The slogan "protect old Beijing" has been shouted for years, but Ma, who grew up in the hutongs, has no time for such surface gestures: the image is preserved, yet the community, its social life and ecology, and the ties between neighbors disappear all the same. So he led the MAD team to make Hutong Bubble. Instead of tearing down and rebuilding, it works like acupuncture: wherever a household needs something, a small extension is added. A new bathroom, for example, improves daily life so that families who have lived here for generations can stay.

In Rome, MAD took the same approach to redeveloping the apartment block at 71 Via Boncompagni.

The building was a fairly modernist structure in a historic district in the center of old Rome. To help it fit into the district, MAD again chose not to demolish and rebuild. It opened up the previously closed facade, and a connection between the building and the street followed naturally.

MAD regards Chaoyang Park Plaza in Beijing, which broke ground in April 2014, and its design for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, unveiled in early November, as important tests of the "Shanshui City" idea. The first borrows the lake and woods of the park, setting a pair of asymmetric towers into the scenery to evoke the traditional mood of Chinese landscape painting. The second is likewise a museum in a park, on the shore of Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago; it touches the water lightly while reaching toward the sky.

But like MAD's earlier Absolute Towers in Mississauga, Canada (nicknamed the "Marilyn Monroe" towers), the Lucas Museum design drew objections from demanding Chicagoans as soon as it was unveiled. The local park protection group Friends of the Parks even sued over it, arguing that the lakefront is protected land and should not host a private museum. Further work on the museum is on hold until the court rules.

Zaha Hadid Architects: High output, high exposure, loud controversy

In design, few could rival Zaha Hadid Architects for exposure in 2014.

The steady stream of new work is one reason. More important, Zaha Hadid herself, along with her buildings, keeps generating talking points.

Over the past year, two of Zaha's new buildings in China, Wangjing SOHO in Beijing and Sky SOHO in Shanghai, opened one after the other in the autumn and became favorite subjects for amateur photographers.

In the central business district of Brisbane, Australia, Zaha's team redesigned the former site of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, with three residential towers and a landscaped park along the riverbank.

In Cambodia, the team unveiled its first project in the country, a genocide memorial in Phnom Penh, which is also Zaha Hadid's first timber building.

At the end of 2014 the team unveiled its first project in Brazil, a luxury apartment building in Rio de Janeiro.

Beyond architecture, the firm moved into interiors, installations, exhibitions and jewelry this year: the Crest installation at the V&A for the 2014 London Design Festival; the Mathematics Gallery at the invitation of London's Science Museum; the Women Fashion Power exhibition at the Design Museum in London; and the Silene Cuff, a bracelet for the Lebanese jeweler House of Aziz & Walid Mouzannar.

Whenever the 2004 Pritzker Prize winner unveils something new, people pay attention. She is a kind of living billboard, courted by commercial projects around the world.

Then she took her design to Japan, where the aura and fame surrounding her suddenly stopped working, and a long-running fight broke out.

Two years ago Zaha Hadid Architects won the commission for Tokyo's National Stadium. It was meant to be the team's next world-famous building after the Aquatics Centre for the 2012 London Olympics. But Japanese architects, and an exacting, practical Japanese public, objected to the "extravagant" scheme: its scale, its budget, and the changes to the plan.

In 2013, Japanese architects including Toyo Ito, Fumihiko Maki, Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma and Riken Yamamoto spoke out one after another, arguing that the building's bulk did not suit its surroundings. In May 2014, Japanese architects and the public together launched an online vote against the stadium design.

Under pressure, the government asked Zaha Hadid's firm to revise the plan. Then the 83-year-old Japanese master Arata Isozaki spoke out against the revised version, calling it an "immeasurable mistake" that left him "in despair."

Someone as forceful as Zaha was bound to hit back. At a small forum in Miami late last year, she said bluntly that her Japanese peers objected because they had not won the commission and did not want foreigners to build the stadium.

Alessi: Both Super and Popular

In 2014 the Italian homeware brand Alessi appeared many times in our "Great Design: Best of the Day" column, because it stands for the good design in daily life that comes from craft, aesthetics and taste.

The 93-year-old brand firmly believes that design can change how people live. Look at the products it released this year and you get a fair idea of how Alessi fuses making beautiful things with making things to sell.

In the first half of 2014, Alessi appeared at Design Shanghai 2014 and at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, bringing its spring/summer 2014 collection and an exhibition of miniature design masterpieces titled "Super & Popular".

"Super & Popular" was one of Alessi's major projects of 2014. It brought together about 70 products in the Italian design tradition, miniatures that distill architecture, design and materials. Together they trace Alessi's development and its contribution to today's consumer society, and, of course, the design masters who have worked with it.

We tend to file Alessi under classic Italian style, but every year it invites architects, artists and industrial designers from around the world to design for it, and it is not bound to any one country's culture.

Take the 2014 products. They include work by Italian designers who have long worked with Alessi, such as Miriam Mirri (the PetNic pet-supplies storage basket and a stainless steel honey spoon), Giulio Iacchetti (the Noè wine bottle holder series) and Marta Sansoni (the Fior d'olio oil bottle stopper). They also include work by well-known designers from elsewhere: the Vime table centerpiece by the Brazilian brothers Fratelli Campana, a teapot by Naoto Fukasawa, the "eat.it" cutlery set by the Dutch designer Wiel Arets, the Territoire tray by the French designer Matali Crasset, and the "Octave" cutlery by the Australian designer Abi Alice, among others.

(The PetNic pet-supplies storage basket)

(The teapot)

(The "eat.it" cutlery set)

(The Noè wine bottle holder series)

(Alessi's autumn/winter 2014 product video)

Pearlfisher: Good design, judged by whether it works

There is plenty of argument over whether design is a profession or a business. But the British design firm Pearlfisher, which has worked for many famous brands, moves easily between professional design and what the market and consumers want. It has taken a long list of industry awards, including London International Awards, New York Festivals gold, Cannes Lions gold, and Pentawards gold and silver.

This year it updated the packaging for the ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's. A background of blue sky, white clouds and green pasture reinforces the brand's core asset, "green and natural," and pictures of fresh ingredients such as strawberries and cherries on the pack give longtime fans and new customers the quickest way to recognize each flavor.

The new bottle for Roca Patrón tequila, made in Mexico, simple and vintage in style, is also Pearlfisher's work. A heavy glass base, a clear body and slender shoulders mark the Roca Patrón range as premium, while the string and medal at the neck signal the most traditional and time-consuming method of hand milling, one that very few producers still use.

Look closely at Pearlfisher's 2014 work and you find that brands such as Cadbury and Ben & Jerry's are regulars, with Pearlfisher handling nearly everything from logo design to packaging refreshes.

Examples include Cadbury Dairy Milk, hugely popular in Britain, and the premium gift box Cadbury Glow, which Cadbury launched first in Thailand this year. We covered the Cadbury Glow packaging in detail earlier: its large halo of light and its clash of gold and purple both underline its premium positioning.

In August we interviewed Pearlfisher's creative director, Hamish Campbell. In 2014 the firm put Blue Bottle Coffee's ready-to-drink iced coffee into a gable-top carton, making Blue Bottle the first brand to use that kind of carton for a coffee drink.

Of course, however well a designer explains the ideas behind a brand's design, what counts in the end is whether consumers buy. Britain's well-known DBA Design Effectiveness Awards judge from exactly that angle, by results in the market, and over the years Pearlfisher has won 14 DBA golds, 10 silvers and 5 bronzes.

In 2014 alone, Pearlfisher's packaging for the American drug company Help Remedies won a DBA gold. The boxes differ clearly in shape and color, and so do the pills, which helps stop people buying or taking the wrong medicine and also strengthens the brand as a whole. The DBA's citation reads: "Help Remedies' packaging successfully embodies the design philosophy of 'less is more,' and helped Help Remedies raise sales by 1,000% in the first year after its new products reached the market."

Normann Copenhagen: The year its products came of age

For the Danish homeware brand Normann Copenhagen, 2014 was the year its products came of age.

Like Alessi, Normann Copenhagen used to have no in-house designers. Each year it received work from designers around the world and released what passed a strict selection. In 2013, while still working with emerging designers worldwide, it took on the Danish designer Simon Legald as one of its own, and many of his new products came out over 2014. One of them, a small side table on wheels called the Block Table, made our TOP 50 best-designed products of the year.

(Simon Legald)

At the 2014 Milan furniture fair, Normann Copenhagen drew plenty of attention. Besides the clean lines that Nordic design demands, its products stood out for their rich colors.

We have recommended many Normann Copenhagen products. Its colors are not highly saturated or bright. On each piece the designers pair them with wood or with restrained basics such as black, white and gray, so nothing looks out of place in a home; the soft effect blends easily into its surroundings.

Take Simon Legald's Block Table, mentioned above: plain and tool-like. Whether in a hallway, a kitchen or a bedroom, when your clutter needs somewhere to go, the Block Table can serve any corner of the home.

Or take this set of handmade cutlery, also by Simon Legald. The pairing of marble and oak, the fine texture across the surface and the well-judged weight make the pieces comfortable in the hand and add a great deal to their refinement.

As Simon Legald says, he tries not to add any unnecessary detail. So Normann Copenhagen's new 2014 collection keeps its cheerful, simple spirit, which won it Germany's Interior Innovation Award. The collection's Onkel leather sofa is especially appealing; Legald says it was inspired by the soft curves of the 1950s.

Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec: Solving problems with elegant, clean design

The top prize at the 2014 London Design Festival, the London Design Medal, went to the French studio of Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec. Ronan and Erwan are brothers. The medal is awarded each year to an outstanding figure in design by a committee of professionals, including well-known designers, design writers and critics, curators and decision-makers.

The Bouroullec brothers also collected the design award of the British magazine Wallpaper, the year's best-of selection at imm Cologne, and the Elle Deco International Design Award.

For all the prizes, neither the brothers nor their work are showy. The work is consistently simple, elegant and full of poetry.

When Ben Evans, director of last year's London Design Festival, presented the medal, he described the brothers as "talented and multifaceted. Their designs span many different fields, and their work always has a simple elegance unlike anyone else's. That is very hard to achieve, because few people can meet every challenge with such elegant, clean design."

Over the past year the brothers released seven works. Among them is the Ruutu colored glass vase we covered earlier, designed for the Finnish brand Iittala, which also made our TOP 50 best-designed products of the year.

The brothers also created two office furniture collections for two classic furniture brands, Magis and Vitra. For the Magis Officina collection, they shaped hammered iron into a new visual language: a new geometric frame on legs supports tabletops of different sizes and materials. The Workbays collection for Vitra is in effect a variation on the office cubicle, with curved enclosing screens that cut out as much distraction as possible.

If 2014 brought one real surprise, it was probably the 3D mixed-color textile made with the Danish textile company Kvadrat, whose double-sided knitting gives the fabric a more three-dimensional surface.

Hard Graft: In accessories, quality is everything

In 2014 the British accessories brand Hard Graft released dozens of new products, and many of them will make you want to buy, buy, buy.

Hard Graft was founded in 2008 by the Austrian designer Monie.ke and the British designer James. Its entirely handmade leather accessories have won it many loyal fans. I once saw someone comment on Hard Graft's Facebook page, "Life is Hard Graft," which says something.

The brand makes wallets, laptop and iPad sleeves, camera bags, card holders and backpacks, among other things. In 2014 it added camera straps, camera wrist straps, headphone accessories, wash bags and travel bags. Beyond a handmade, strongly English feel, the products have an extremely minimal beauty.

In accessories you have to move fast. Just a week after the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus went on sale, Hard Graft's cases for them were on sale too. Its signature pairing of fine leather and Italian wool, with a secure, snug fit, looks especially refined among the loud and fussy phone cases on the market.

Yes, this is the refinement Hard Graft has always insisted on: practicality, craft and aesthetics, and none of the three can be missing.

The co-branded leather headphone accessories made for B&O PLAY, the headphone line of the top Danish audio brand Bang & Olufsen, also use Hard Graft's signature fine Italian leather, and suit anyone who wants to show off their headphones.

Beyond these small things, Hard Graft last year also released a large travel bag that may turn a few heads. This is the brand's first Travelbag: brown leather lined with gray felt, the brand's standard pairing.

The two designers always manage to make leather and wool look elegant and refined in an English way, so that with one of their accessories even the dullest gadget suddenly looks cool.

Mixing leather and wool is common now, but Hard Graft wins on workmanship and feel. Designers like Monie.ke and James, who are willing to spend lavishly on materials, are bound to deliver quality. As for the price, well, it certainly won't be low.

Cover image from www.blnktech.com