21 October 2016

Blueprint Awards 2016: The winners

Blueprint Award for Critical Thinking 2016

Winner: Alice Rawsthorn

Alice Rawsthorn

Nominated by our Judges, voted for by Blueprint readers

Alice Rawsthorn is a critic who writes about design in the International New York Times. She is also a columnist for Frieze magazine and an author, whose latest book Hello World: Where Design Meets Life explores design’s influence on our lives: past, present and future.

Born in Manchester, Rawsthorn graduated in art history from Cambridge University. From 1985 to 2001, she was an award-winning journalist for the Financial Times and later director of the Design Museum in London from 2001 until 2006 when she became design critic of the global edition of the New York Times.

An honorary senior fellow of the Royal College of Art with an honorary doctorate from the University of the Arts, Alice has served on many cultural juries including the Turner Prize for contemporary art, Stirling Prize for architecture, PEN History Book Prize, Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Buckminster Fuller Challenge, Museum of the Year prize and the BAFTA film and television awards. She is a founding member of Writers at Liberty, a group of writers who are committed to supporting the human rights charity Liberty.

Hello World

A trustee of Arts Council England from 2007 to 2013, Rawsthorn was previously ACE’s lead advisor on the visual arts and chair of the Turning Point review of the contemporary visual arts. She is a past chair of the British Council’s Design Advisory Group, and a former member of the Design Council and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design. As well as contributing essays to a number of books on design and contemporary culture, Rawsthorn is the author of an acclaimed biography of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

An influential public speaker on design, she has participated in important events including TED and the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Based in London, she is chair of trustees at Chisenhale Gallery and the contemporary dance group Michael Clark Company, and a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery. Alice was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to design and the arts.