Créateurs Design Awards 2026
Image: Christian de Portzamparc, Suzhou Bay Cultural Center, China, 2020. Photo: Shao Feng
ARCHITECTURE
Christian de Portzamparc
Lifetime Achievement Award
Christian de Portzamparc has been announced as the recipient of the 2026 Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award by the Créateurs Design Awards (CDA). French architect and urbanist Christian de Portzamparc began to make himself known through the Hautes Formes housing complex in Paris in 1979. He is the first French architect to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1994. From the Cité de la Musique in Paris to the LVMH Tower in New York and the Suzhou Bay Cultural Center in China, Portzamparc has reshaped how cities are imagined and experienced. His work bridges architecture and urbanism with poetry, rigor and a profound sense of civic life.
About the Créateurs Design Awards
MUNCH Award 2025
Image: Samia Halaby, A Letter From Asia to Barbara, 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 104 x 104 cm.
Ayyam Gallery
ART
Samia Halaby
MUNCH Award
The MUNCH Museum in Oslo announced that Palestinian artist Samia Halaby is the second recipient of the MUNCH Award, which honors artistic freedom of expression. The museum said Halaby was selected for her "long-term commitment to protesting injustices related to class, gender and race." Based in New York, she was at the forefront of the development of digital art through her experiments with early computer animation, and has been exploring abstraction in its different forms for over 60 years. Her paintings both expand geometric traditions from the Islamic context and introduce contributions from around the world to North-Atlantic regional modernism.
Festival de Film de la Villa Médicis 2025
Image: Lloyd Wong, Unfinished, Lesley Loksi Chan, 2025, Canada.
ART
Lloyd Wong, Unfinished by
Lesley Loksi Chan
Prix du meilleur film
For its 5th edition, the Festival de Film de la Villa Médicis awarded the Prix du meilleur film to Lesley Loksi Chan for Lloyd Wong, Unfinished. In the 1990s, Chinese-Canadian artist Lloyd Wong began a video work about his living with HIV. It remained unfinished. Thirty years after his death, Canadian filmmaker Lesley Loksi Chan discovers and edits the material to create a 29-minute film that explores the idea of incompletion.
About the Festival de Film de la Villa Médicis
Prix de la Maison Ruinart 2025
Image: Présage, from Alchimia series, 2025, 100 x 80 cm. © Marine Lanier
Courtesy of the artist and Prix de la Maison Ruinart.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Marine Lanier
Prix de la Maison Ruinart
Photographer Marine Lanier has won the 7th Prix de la Maison Ruinart with her series Alchimia, the story of her residency in Champagne this year. Her work will be exhibited in the Emergence section of the Paris Photo fair, from 13 to 16 November 2025 at the Grand Palais. According to Maison Ruinart, Marine Lanier has "an approach reminiscent of documentary fable or magic realism". The artist plays with light, symbols and monochrome, dimensions that are particularly evident in the shades of black and white and gold in her winning Alchimia series. The images in the series, all vertical, tell the story of a stay in a region that was unknown to her, and combine people, landscapes, archive images and studio shots.
About the Prix de la Maison Ruinart
Heinz Awards 2025
Image: Jennifer Packer, A Lesson in Longing, 2019. Oil on canvas, 275.6 × 348 cm. © Jennifer Packer. Photo: Ron Amstutz. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, and Corvi-Mora, London.
Installation view, Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation. Photo: Argenis Apolinario for Print Center New York.
ART
Jennifer Packer
Marie Watt
Heinz Awards for the Arts
American artists Jennifer Packer and Marie Watt were named the winners of this year’s Heinz Awards for the Arts. New York–based Jennifer Packer is best known for her jewel-toned paintings whose subjects suggest a tremendous, if disquieted, inner world. Her acclaimed 2021 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum centered images of Black figures that toed the line between figuration and abstraction. Marie Watt is a citizen of the Seneca Nation with German-Scot ancestry. Her practice weaves together printmaking, textiles and sculpture to examine cultural legacies. Her sculpture series Blanket Storiescomprises monumental towers of folded blankets donated to the artist by local communities, each bearing a message that explains the importance of the object to their original owners.
France Design Impact Award
Image: Fontaine de nettoyage — Paris Habitat x Studio Idaë, 2021. Photo: Pierre L'excellent
DESIGN
France Design Impact Award
In a context of ecological, societal and economic transition, design plays a decisive role. The first edition of the France Design Impact Award highlights exemplary projects, selected for their real impact on uses, practices and lifestyles. Out of more than 200 entries, 40 projects were selected by three expert juries - environmental, societal and economic - for their ability to transform our environments in a sustainable way. Objects, services, technical devices or digital solutions: the proposals are varied and draw on many fields of design. The Grand Jury, chaired by designer Mathieu Lehanneur, selected 13 winners from among the nominees.
About the France Design Impact Award
Tokyo Gendai 2025
Image: Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery, Etsuko Nakatsuji: Where are you from?, Hana section, Tokyo Gendai 2025. Photo: Masaki Yato/ARTnews Japan
ART
Etsuko Nakatsuji
Hana Artist Award
This year marked the third edition of Tokyo Gendai. Among the new initiatives is the inaugural Hana Artist Award presented to an artist exhibiting in the Hana section, which highlights emerging and mid-career artists. The 2025 recipient is painter Etsuko Nakatsuji (b. 1937), represented by Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery. Her latest series, Where are you from?, marks a new phase in her artistic journey. Blending abstraction and figuration, Nakatsuji’s works evoke deep empathy for human emotions and existence. Using dots, lines and colors, she visualizes the subtle vibrations of human presence, prompting viewers to reflect on the inner beauty and complexity of humanity.
