Art Center is proud to announce the Alumni Award winners in the categories of lifetime achievement, outstanding service and young innovator. The annual honors allow Art Center to publicly recognize the talent, service and design influence of our alumni. Awards will be presented at the Fall Graduation ceremony Dec. 15 at 4 p.m.
Bruce Burdick ENVL 61: Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award
Bruce Burdick at Art Center in 1961
Bruce Burdick’s credits include designs for Charles and Ray Eames, John Follis and Herb Rosenthal. The flexible office furniture Burdick designed for Herman Miller was named Time magazine’s the Best of 1981 for Industrial Design.
Burdick founded and directed the department of Environmental Design at the Art Center College of Design from 1971 to 1975.
His firm, The Burdick Group, has received design awards from the Institute of Business Designers and the Industrial Designers Society of America. Projects include exhibits, interiors and interactive media for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum, the Philips Competence Center in the Netherlands and the Garden of Samsung Electronics in Seoul, Korea; as well as retail interiors for Esprit de Corp and an international traveling exhibit for AT&T and Olivetti.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Burdick is also father of Anne Burdick, Art Center’s department chair of Media Design Practices.
Gala Narezo PHOT 01: Outstanding Service Alumni Award
Gala Narezo is a photographer, art director and co-founder of What Moves You?, which creates platforms for social issues through design, story and art.
Narezo has been an NGO representative with the United Nations for Designmatters, finding opportunities for design students to collaborate on United Nations issues.
Narezo, whose work has been exhibited across the world, recently published a book of photographs “Locales, Portraits of the Colonia Roma.”
John Niero ENVL 07: Young Alumni Innovator Award
John Niero
Upon graduation from Art Center, John Niero launched Just Not Normal with an emphasis on furniture and lighting design.
His creations, which take inspiration from simple sea foam to intricate 18th century Japanese stencils, have earned several accolades. His J-low chaise and table/ottoman, a 21st-century take on an African tribal chair, won the ICFF Studio Bernhardt Design competition.
And his zipper silicone luminaire — a zip-up, quilt-inspired light — won first prize in the FLARE Architectural Lighting Magazine’s Progetti di Luce 2008 design competition.
