PANERAI presents the maiden Design Miami/ Design Visionary Award
Panerai recently presented the first ever Design Miami/ Design Visionary Award at its Miami Design District Boutique.
Angelo Bonati, CEO of Panerai, Craig Robins, Co-Founder of Design Miami, and Rodman Primack, Executive Director of Design Miami, presented Yves Béhar with the 2015 Design Visionary Award and a personalized Luminor 1950 10 Days GMT Automatic Ceramica.
Béhar, a Swiss designer and founder of Fuseproject, was honoured with the award for his significant contributions to the design community and the impact he has made through numerous humanitarian and social advocacy projects.
With the institution of the Design Visionary Award presented by Panerai, Officine Panerai intends to make its own contribution to supporting excellence in the field of design. For the first year of the partnership between Design Miami/ and Officine Panerai, a designer has been chosen who deserves to be called a Visionary because of “his holistic design vision and especially the substantial impact he has made through humanitarian projects, such as the INDEX-award winning One Laptop per Child and See Better to Learn Better”. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Yves Béhar is a designer and entrepreneur, one of the first to demonstrate with his own integrated projects that design can be a formidable tool for influencing social and environmental change.
As Angelo Bonati, CEO of Officine Panerai, has said: “Panerai has found in Design Miami/ a remarkable partner for promoting excellence in design. We have embarked upon a partnership which has begun in the very best way: an award presented to such a Visionary as Yves Béhar, who not only has a remarkable talent as a designer but also a clear and revolutionary vision of what design can do for society”.
To further support Yves Béhar’s contributions to society and design, Panerai has chosen to make a financial contribution to several causes which are personally significant to him. Mr. Béhar has chosen SPRING Accelerator, a global program that supports businesses who can improve the lives of adolescent girls; and the San Francisco MoMA Education Fund, in support of arts education in his home community.
The Panerai Miami Design District flagship boutique was designed earlier this year by well-known Spanish designer, Patricia Urquiola, who has worked in Italy for many years. Urquiola has recently refreshed Officine Panerai’s retail concept, interpreting it in an innovative way while remaining true to the values of the brand and the pillars of its identity: its historic association with the city of Florence; the references to the world of the sea; the sober style, rigorous and masculine, in which apparent simplicity is the end result of sophisticated research into the objectives of absolute quality and functionality.
Guests enjoyed cocktails at the Panerai Miami Design District Boutique, designed by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola, followed by an elegant Italian-inspired dinner under a beautiful star-filled sky.
