Federal Office of Culture honors Suzanne Bartsch, Verena Huber and Beat Streuli

The Swiss Grand Prix Design has been awarded to designers of national and international significance since 2007. It is endowed with 40,000 Swiss francs per person. The award will be presented at the Swiss Design Awards ceremony in Basel on June 14, 2022.

Suzanne Bartsch: Formative style icon

Susanne Bartsch, born in Bäretswil (ZH), gained international fame in 1989 when she held her Love Ball - a charity event for AIDS research - for the first time. Thanks to her extraordinary outfits, expressive makeup and unique style, she became a fashion icon and muse for countless fashion designers. In 2017, Netflix released a documentary film about Susanne Bartsch. Joy Ahoulou, fashion expert at the Federal Design Commission, calls the early campaigner for the rights of the LGBTQI community and the recognition of people living with HIV/AIDS a "dazzling gesamtkunstwerk" and "defining style icon." Susanne Bartsch lives and works in New York.

Verena Huber: Uncompromising researcher of living culture

Born in Basel in 1938, Verena Huber has worked extensively as an interior designer, researcher, author, and teacher on the issues of living and staying. Her own first works in the 1970s were followed by larger commissions: Restaurants, ships, libraries, as well as the interior design for Jakob Zweifel's sister high-rise at Zurich University Hospital. In addition, she wrote a great deal about the possibilities and limitations of interior design. Together with eleven other interior designers, Verna Huber founded the "Archiv Innenarchitektur Schweiz" (AI-S) in the summer of 2021. According to Jörg Boner, president of the Federal Design Commission, Verena Huber has stayed away from "meaningless aesthetics and conformity in every respect" throughout her creative career. Verena Huber lives and works in Zurich.

Beat Streuli: Important photographer for spectacular installations

Beat Streuli, born in Altdorf in 1957, attended art schools in Zurich and Basel and was then a guest student at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where he spent most of the 1980s. His work was first exhibited at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in 1986. Studio scholarships at the Cité des Arts and the Fondation Cartier in Paris and at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome enabled him to spend longer periods in these two capitals. Numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums at home and abroad followed. In 2019, he published Fabric of Reality, one of his most comprehensive artist books to date. For Tatyana Franck, member of the Federal Design Commission until 2021, Beat Streuli is one of the leading representatives of street portrait art: "Although urban landscapes form the background of his paintings, people and not architectural or structural elements are the focus of his work." Beat Streuli lives and works in Wädenswil and Brussels.

Works on display at exhibition

The works of this year's award winners will be on display at the Swiss Design Awards exhibition, which will be held in parallel with Art Basel and Design Miami/ Basel. Admission to the exhibition is free. The exhibition, during which the Swiss Grand Prix Design 2022 will be presented on June 14, was largely designed by the winners of the Swiss Design Awards themselves. In addition, a comprehensive publication on the Swiss Grand Prix Design 2022 will be published by Scheidegger und Spiess to mark the occasion.