Genderless voice, Uber bikes and New York’s The Shed shortlisted for Beazley Designs of the Year | CNN

Courtesy Design Museum

The Design Museum has announced the 76 nominees for the 2019 Beazley Design Award. Beatrice Galilee, this year's guest curator, selects her favorite picks from the shortlist for CNN Style, starting with The Shed, New York's new event space that can expand and contract, designed by New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

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Jump, an electric bicycle, is part of Uber's new fleet for urban mobility. "The relationship between our phones and our cities has transformed with Uber, which is now moving into this more environmentally friendly offerings," said curator Beatrice Galilee.

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Muji's Gacha is a self-driving shuttle bus that works in all weather conditions, and has no defined front and back. Now undergoing testing, it will be rolled out as early as 2020.

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Q is the world's first gender-neutral voice, which is designed to eliminate gender bias from technologies such as digital assistants. It's created by combining the voices of five people that do not identify as either female or male.

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"One of the most talked about catwalk shows this year was Viktor and Rolf's. They did these dresses that were absolutely huge with these statements on them. They were very Instagrammable, but also touched upon women's voices and women occupying more space," said curator Beatrice Galilee.

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The CanguRo (Italian for "kangaroo") mobility robot, designed in Japan, is an autonomous assistant for the elderly that transforms into a mobility vehicle.

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The brand identity for the Wolverhampton Wanderers, an English football team, was influenced by the region's ties with steel and ironmongering, so the logo contains a 3D wolf head made of iron.

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Opalis, an online directory for reusable building materials, allows architects and owners to deal with construction works in an environmentally conscious way.

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"It's really amazing to see these close up, because you sort of forget how graphic the film is -- but the costumes have nothing to do with that era. When you look at the patterns, you realize it's actually a really contemporary look."

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An inner-city skateboarding park and cafe built out of a derelict courtyard in Athens, Greece, with the help of social entrepreneurship.

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Led By Donkeys was a billboard campaign targeting Brexit in the UK. "Probably more than anything this year, in British design, politics and campaigning has been just so much on the forefront. I think we forget that our lives didn't use to be dominated by this sort of binary positions, for and against one topic."

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This classic opera adaptation by Yuval Sharon was staged by the State Opera in Berlin, where it was the first new production in 25 years.

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This raw concrete mosque in Sydney was designed to reunite a previously disparate religious community. "This is an incredibly sensitive, beautiful, contemporary mosque design," said Galilee.

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Promoted by Transport for London (TfL), this is a new rating system for heavy vehicles to improve road safety, especially cyclists who end up in a truck's 'blind spot.'

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These placards were used during the strikes inspired by climate activist Greta Thunberg, which have seen the participation of 1.4 million students in 112 countries.

CNN —

The world’s first gender-neutral synthetic voice, New York’s new cultural center The Shed, and Uber’s colorful Jump electric city bicycles are among the nominees for the 2019 Beazley Designs of the Year, an established annual award and exhibition run by London’s Design Museum.

Also shortlisted for the award, now in its twelfth year, were Tommy Hilfiger’s Adaptive clothing range – for children and adults with different disabilities and designed with velcro, magnets and easy-open necklines – and Adidas’ Korean-inspired Cozy Collection, worn by Beyoncé. In total, 76 nominees have been shortlisted this year.

An innovative hands-free breast pump that can be worn inside a nursing bra, a flushable and biodegradable pregnancy test made without plastic, and a low-cost, pocket-size HIV test that can be self-administered at home have also received a nod.

The award is tied to an exhibition at London’s Design Museum, showcasing the nominees, and although the selections are not based on any single underlying concept, there are themes emerging across the various disciplines.

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Tommy Hilfiger's Adaptive line of clothing.

“There are a lot of designs that deal with gender bias, or addressing gender inequality,” said curator Beatrice Galilee in a phone interview. “Others are looking into sustainability and drawing attention to issues related to the climate crisis or people who are trying to put forward manifestos on how we should be living, and how we should be using materials around us.”

The exhibition itself ties into that idea, by reusing materials from the previous show that occupied the same space, curated by British architect David Adjaye on the theme of memory and architecture. “We are reusing the walls of the previous exhibition, and everything that we cut out was also reused, so the whole exhibition is analysis of contemporary exhibition making: We’re kind of using exhibition design as an exhibition in itself,” said Galilee.

Rather than in thematic sections, the nominees are arranged into rooms based on the six award categories: products, transport, graphics, fashion, digital and architecture. “Plus, each of the rooms has this own typeface, which in itself is a kind of typeface exhibition,” said Galilee.

A new addition to this year’s show is a film that was commissioned specifically for the architecture section. “Sometimes it’s hard for architecture exhibitions to convey their message because they necessarily end up with models or drawings. So we commissioned a film (about the nominees) to show sounds and textures and how these buildings are being used, and how these spaces are being occupied.”

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The Miami College Garage, a multi-story car park in Miami's design district, is among the Architecture nominees.

The overall winner will be announced on 21 November, along with winners for each category.

Last year, “Counter Investigations: Forensic Architecture,” an exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts took home the main prize. In 2017, architect David Adjaye emerged as the winner for his National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, out of a politically charged shortlist. In 2016, the award went to an emergency refugee shelter designed by Ikea.

Browse the gallery above to see curator Beatrice Galilee’s exclusive picks for CNN Style from the 76 nominees.

Beazley Designs of the Year is on display at London’s Design Museum from Sept. 11, 2019 to Feb. 9, 2020.