Architect David Chipperfield has been given one of the highest awards available to a British citizen while designers including Yinka Ilori, Ilse Crawford and 6a Architects have received honours in the 2021 New Year Honours list.
Chipperfield was added to the elite Order of the Companions of Honour in the annual list of awards given for achievements by British citizens.
Interior designer Crawford has been awarded a CBE, 6a Architects co-founders Thomas Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald OBEs and London designer Ilori an MBE.
British architect Chipperfield joins Richard Rogers in the order Order of the Companions of Honour, which is limited to 65 members and is awarded “for having a major contribution to the arts, science, medicine, or government lasting over a long period of time”.
RIBA Gold Medal-winner Chipperfield established his studio David Chipperfield Architects in 1985.
He has designed numerous significant cultural buildings in the UK including the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames and Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, which were both shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, as well as the Turner Contemporary in Margate.
Chipperfield, who has an office in Berlin, also completed numerous cultural buildings in Germany including the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, which won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2007.
A further four buildings designed by the studio in the country have been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize with the prestigious renovation of the Neues Museum in central Berlin being nominated in 2010. The building won the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award in 2011.
Alongside Chipperfield, several other architects and designers were recognised on the New Year Honours list.
Rising star Ilori has been made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) for his services to design. Known for his colourful style, the designer began making furniture and has more recently creating larger installations including a summer pavilion in Dulwich and the renovating an underpass in Battersea.
Writing on Instagram after receiving the award, Illori revealed that he almost gave up being a designer five years ago.
“In 2015 there were sometimes thoughts of giving up designing due to the frustration and feeling people didn’t understand the designer I wanted to be,” he wrote.
“The driving force behind me to continue and push through was always the desire to make my parents proud,” he continued. “They had given up so much of their own lives to make sure me and my siblings had the best in life
“No matter what situation you are in it is never permanent. Keep pushing because if a young kid like me from Islington can do it so can you.”
This year, Ilori won the Design Museum’s Emerging Design Medal, designed a colourful skatepark in France and created a message of hope in support of the UK’s National Health Service.
British interior designer Crawford has been made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE). Crawford, who was made a Member of the British Empire in the 2014 New Year Honours list, runs multidisciplinary design studio Studioilse and was the founder of the Man and Wellbeing department at Design Academy Eindhoven.
She was recently profiled in Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design series and spoke to Dezeen during Virtual Design Festival.
Also honoured on the list were 6a Architects co-founders Thomas Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald, who both were given the Order of the British Empire.
Emerson and Macdonald founded 6a Architects, which is best-known for designing cultural buildings in the UK, in 2001. The studio recently extended the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes and previously renovated the Raven Row contemporary art gallery in east London and expanded the South London Gallery.
Its design for a photography studio for Juergen Teller was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize 2017.
The Queen’s New Year Honours are awarded each year in December. Together with the Birthday Honours given out on the Queen’s birthday in June they make up part of the British honours system.
In last year’s New Year Honour list, architect Jamie Fobert and graphic designer Peter Saville received CBEs, while designer Sadie Morgan received an OBE.
