2024 Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services to Design Education to be given to Dr Patricia Moore

The 1851 Royal Commission and the Sir Misha Black Awards Committee have announced that the Sir Misha Black Medal for Distinguished Services to Design Education for 2024 will be awarded to Dr Patricia Moore.

Dr Patricia Moore, President of MooreDesign Associates is a dedicated educator, serving universities throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe. As a pioneering figure in design, she is a leading authority on consumer lifespan behaviours and requirements. For a period of three years from 1979 to 1982, in a daring experiment, Moore travelled throughout the United States and Canada disguised as women of more than 80 years of age. This experience of responding to people, products, and environments as an elder enabled an empathetic approach to design that informed much of her future work.

Since 1990, Moore has designed more than 300 Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Environments for healthcare facilities throughout North America, Europe, China and Japan. She is a frequent international lecturer, media guest and the author of numerous books, including: Disguised: A True Story, and Ageing, Ingenuity & Design. She holds undergraduate degrees in Industrial, Environmental and Communication Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology, a completion of Advanced Studies in Biomechanics at New York University’s Medical School, as well as graduate degrees in Psychology and Social Gerontology from Columbia University. She is a Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America.

Named by ID Magazine in 1997 as one of the ‘40 Most Socially Conscious Designers’ in the world, Moore was selected in 2000 by a consortium of news editors and organisations as one of the ‘100 Most Important Women in America’. In 2012, Moore was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Syracuse University, Hasselt University in 2019, Sheffield University in 2021, the College for Creative Studies in 2022, and the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2024.

Throughout her illustrious career, Dr Patricia Moore has paved the way for more inclusive
and empathetic approaches to design, and has been the recipient of honours almost too
numerous to list, including being named by the Industrial Designers Society of America
as ‘Most Notable American Industrial Designer’ in 2016. She was the recipient of The
National Design Award in 2019, and in 2020 the ‘Changemaker Award’ awarded by the
Center for Health Design. Most recently the World Design Organisation recognised her
impressive design legacy, influence and leadership in awarding her the 2022 World Design Medal™.

The Sir Misha Black Awards Committee, in honouring Dr Moore for her distinguished
services to design education, recognises that her innovation in Universal Design resonates far beyond her own particular field and is true to the principles initially championed by Sir Misha Black in his work, over 40 years ago, at both the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.

Malcolm Garrett, Chairman of the Sir Misha Black Awards Committee, commented:
“Patricia Moore stands out as a truly extraordinary design educator and innovator. I can’t
express it better than Syracuse University who said she serves as a “guiding force for a
more humane and liveable world, blazing a path for inclusiveness, as a true leader in the
movement of Universal Design.”

Dr Moore has commented: “Design is the ultimate determination of life’s quality. To
deliver global dignity for all, by Design, is our responsibility and an ever-evolving challenge for creativity and innovation. I am humbled beyond words with this recognition of my efforts to edify and produce exemplars in a career, for which I always encourage students to strive, as their joy, not merely their job.”