Our World's Designers outside the Mainstream

Fisker Karma
Koolhaas' Louisville plan
Hadid's Port at Antwerp


The average American tends to classify the word “design” most commonly with fashion design and sometimes interior design – both of which allude to fine fabrics, haute couture and movie stars. Business Week has compiled a 27-person list of the World’s Most Influential Designers including a wide range of professions including biomimicry, aerospace and digital design.

As far as architecture and interiors, names expected to appear in this category include Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Philippe Starck.

Rem Koolhaas, 65, is the cofounder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and is responsible for some of the most groundbreaking architecture of the 20th and 21st century. He is recognized not only for his architectural design but also for his writings on urbanism and architecture. While a professor at Harvard University, Koolhaas has extended a subsidiary of OMA - AMO, which is to look at the global goals of architecture. A plan for his art museum and mixed-use center in Louisville is the multi-faceted image above that appears as several skyscrapers connected.

Another name that appeared on the list is USC’s dean of architecture Qingyun Ma. Ma became an international name when working on Koolhaas’ first Harvard Project on Cities. With his design firm MADA s.p.a.m., Ma has created the most influential name in design out of China. His genius can be most recently observed in Beijing where he served as the project coordinator and presenter of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Along with Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid is a winner of the Pritzker Prize – the most prestigious architectural award. Hadid was the first woman in history to receive this award. Known as an experimental designer, her concrete fire station in Germany in 1993, put her on the list of designers to watch, and critics have been watching ever since. The image above in blue is her plan for the Antwerp Port Authority.

Philippe Starck, a revolutionary furniture and product designer, first entered the public eye in interior design and currently holds a contract with SBE Real Estate Development. This relationship has lead to Starck's designs to appear in many hip new restaurants in Los Angeles including Katsuya, XIV and SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. Starck has most recently designed the interior of a spaceship.

Philippe Starck is one that is blurring the lines between the fashion world of design and the industrial world of design. With this said, the following biographies are of designers in a whole new level of innovation that make Business Week’s Top 27 Most Influential Designers in the World.

Burt Rutan is working on creating the world’s first fleet of commercial spaceships. His company, Rutan Aircraft, founded on the basis of creating do-it-yourself aircraft built at home, has recently partnered with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic organization.

Steve Jobs usually steals the show as the global face of Apple, but, Jonathan Ive should not go unnoticed. Ive is Apple’s senior vice-president for industrial design and has overseen the development of the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad – products that have and will continue to change the way we operate our daily lives.

In addition to Ive, other names listed in technology include Bob Greenberg of the digital design firm R/Ga, a digital advertising and marketing agency in New York. Greenberg began his ventures in motion picture graphics working on films as Alien, Predator and Seven. At R/Ga, Greenberg has left Hollywood behind for digital design at companies including Nike and Wal-Mart.

Business Week writes that it is not hard to come up with brands designed by Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar. Their company Chermayeff and Geismar was started in 1957 and since then they have designed the iconic brand logos such as Pan Am Airlines and Mobil and are currently working with the high fashion line, Armani Exchange.

Janine Benyus has helped companies adjust to more sustainable methods by adopting nature’s ways. As founder of the Biomimicry Guild, Benyus has acquired clients such as General Electric, General Mills and Hewlett-Packard. Benyus has educated executives on building practices such as making the exterior of buildings more water resistant to repel water and making it drip off much like a lotus plant leaf.

With a $528.7 million loan from the Obama Administration, Henrik Fisker designed the Fisker Karma – a luxury hybrid electric vehicle. In 2000 Fisker designed the BMW Z8 roadster and in 2007 founded Fisker Automotive.

This wide range of designers throughout the world have each impacted our lives in more than one way and their efforts have trickled down from their specialties into the convoluted world of design.