Co-Principal, Birsel + Seck
http://birselplusseck.com
Judging Category: Furniture
Ayse Birsel is an award-winning product designer, Deconstruction/Reconstruction thinker and Fulbright scholar. As co-principal of Birsel + Seck, a humanistic design and innovation studio in New York City, she partners with industry leaders such as GE, Hasbro, Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Moroso, OfficeMax and Target. Simplicity, Empathy, and Sustainability are central to her work. So is designing systems in which a few good pieces can form incredibly rich and adaptable solutions.
Applying principles learned as a product designer, Ayse developed her process, Deconstruction and Reconstruction™, as a creative tool to help break existing preconceptions to solve problems in a way that is intuitive, logical and elegant. Ayse is a Cooper Hewitt Museum’s National Design Awards finalist. She is the recipient of the 2001 Young Designer Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Athena Award for Excellence in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design.
Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Ayse has received numerous design awards, including the IDEA Gold Award, I.D. Magazine Excellence Award and Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award for her work. She is a graduate of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, which has recognized her for her contributions to her country in 2011. She graduated from Pratt Institute with a master’s degree in product design. Ayse Birsel is Turkish born.
