The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s annual National Design Awards program honors the legacy of preeminent design leadership in America—and the power of design to change the world. Now in its 21st year, the prestigious accolade recognizes innovation across a diversity of categories such as architecture, fashion design, and climate action.

Normally, the institution would welcome hundreds from New York’s design cognoscenti to its Upper East Side location for a buzzy gala, but this year opted for a virtual ceremony to abide by social distancing. Hosted by interior designer Bobby Berk, the Emmy-nominated star of Netflix’s Queer Eye, the evening featured short films that highlight the work and impact of the winners, which were selected by a jury of design luminaries.

This year’s winners include the creative crowdfunding go-to Kickstarter (Design Visionary); the stormwater cleaner Sponge Park in Brooklyn (Climate Action); Rosario Dawson and Abrima Erwiah’s fashion lifestyle and social enterprise Studio One Eighty Nine (Emerging Designer); the in-demand global firm Snøhetta (Architecture); Scott Dadich, founder of communications design firm Godfrey Dadich Partners (Communications Design); the boutique experiential firm Design I/O (Digital Design); fashion rule-breaker Telfar Clemens (Fashion Design); public space experts OJB (Landscape Architecture); and the Denver nonprofit consultancy Catapult Design (Product Design).

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Nicholas Hamilton Holmes often finds inspiration in unorthodox places. For the Canadian furniture maker’s new OXALINO collection, he cites a medley: “old tattoos, meditation, and French Provincial style.” Bearing his emerging studio’s signature tubular forms, the sturdy OS Chair, an edition of 10, at first seems unassuming, but look closer—the reference points reveal themselves.

Perhaps the most striking feature is the OXALINO pattern. Holmes hand-painted the spiraling decoration with an oxidizing solution onto tannin-rich white oak like zebra stripes, affording the OS Chair a bold, contemporary edge. "It adds energy and extreme graphic qualities, while also being subtle from afar,” Holmes says of the maximalist finish, which embraces nature and artifice in equal measure. “The technique was less chosen, more found.”

When: Oct. 3–Nov. 7

Where: Night Gallery, Los Angeles

What: Since the mid-1980s, Canadian painter Wanda Koop has channeled her fascination with the post-human condition into portraits that ascribe emotion to robotic subjects through fluid neon strokes that dissipate and dissolve. A highlight, Heartbeat Bot (Bleu), is based on the symbol for facial recognition. Threaded throughout are fragments of the terrestrial, nodding to her famous paintings that depict threatening landscapes—veiny trees, a full moon pulsating above a reflective lake, and most urgently, a capitol building rendered under a blood-red sky. Her work speaks to our uncertain past, present, and future: “Like the landscapes,” she explains, “these are portraits of the everyperson: this construct of mask stripped bare, like an archetype of now.”

Scientists are racing against time to identify plant and fungi species before they’re lost forever. According to a new study by the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, 40 percent of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction due to human-led environmental destruction. “Every time we lose a species, we lose an opportunity for humankind,” Alexandre Antonelli, who led the study, tells The Guardian. “We’re losing a race against time as we’re probably losing species faster than we can find and name them.” The grim findings follow a recent UN report that revealed the world failed to meet a single target to curb biodiversity losses this past decade.

In 2017, a plot of land in Hong Kong’s central business district that housed a multi-story parking lot sold for a record-breaking $3 billion. Located directly across from I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower, the first supertall built outside the United States and currently the city’s fourth-tallest building, the underutilized site at 2 Murray Road will soon house a sinuous, nature-filled glass skyscraper designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The British firm, now headed by Patrik Schumacher after Hadid’s untimely death in 2016, drew inspiration from Hong Kong’s local vegetation.

Staying true to Hadid’s famous affinity for curves, the skyscraper’s glass-paneled facade mimics the graceful structural forms of a blossoming Bauhinia—a flower inextricably linked to Hong Kong’s identity. (It first propagated in the city’s nearby botanic gardens and even appears on the Hong Kong flag.) The building’s main body, meanwhile, will be elevated above-ground and connect to the city’s network of raised pedestrian walkways, with courtyards and gardens sitting underneath. Planted areas also appear higher up within open-air balconies that will house running tracks and flow seamlessly into the interiors, which will primarily be used for office space. A completion date for the skyscraper has yet to be announced, though we anticipate construction may be delayed due to the coronavirus.

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