‘Curve Appeal’ receives honorable mention in Fast Company’s 2020 World Changing Ideas Awards

New York, April 28, 2020 — The winners of Fast Company’s 2020 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced today, honoring the businesses, policies, projects, and concepts that are actively engaged and deeply committed to flattening the curve when it comes to the climate crisis, social injustice, or economic inequality. Finalists are highlighted in the May/June issue of the print magazine, which hits newsstands May 5.

Designed by global multidisciplinary design firm WATG, Curve Appeal is the world’s first freeform 3D-printed home. The outcome of a four-year-long collaboration with USA-based Branch Technology, the project is slated to revolutionize the architecture, engineering and construction industry through its unique, boundary-pushing curvilinear 3D-printing process. Having attracted global attention since its inception in 2016, Curve Appeal today adds Fast Company to its list of awards, receiving an Honorable Mention in the category of Spaces, Places and Cities.

Now in its fourth year, the World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 26 winners, more than 200 finalists, and more than 500 honorable mentions—with Health and Wellness, Corporate Social Responsibility, and AI and Data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent judges selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 3,000 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, and more.

Illustrating how some of the world’s most inventive entrepreneurs and companies are addressing grave global challenges, Fast Company’s May/June issue celebrates, among others, an electric engine for airplanes that eliminates emissions from flights—and expensive fuel from the tricky financial calculus of the airline industry; a solar-powered refrigerator that finally frees people in remote villages from daily treks to distant markets, transforming the economics of those households; an online marketplace that connects food companies with farms to buy ugly and surplus produce to fight waste; and an initiative to offset all of the carbon costs of shipping, creating a new model for e-commerce sustainability.

Of Curve Appeal’s Honorable Mention, WATG and Wimberly Interiors’ CEO + President Anthony Mallows said, “For 75 years, exceptional design has been at the core of everything we do as a firm. Now more than ever, our global community needs ‘world changing ideas’ and we are honored that a project as worthy as Curve Appeal can be included in that conversation.”

“There seems no better time to recognize organizations that are using their ingenuity, resources, and, in some cases, their scale to tackle society’s biggest problems,” says Stephanie Mehta, Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists, under the leadership of Senior Editor Morgan Clendaniel, have uncovered some of the smartest and most inspiring projects of the year.”

For more information, interviews or images please contact Erica Raskin.

About the World Changing Ideas Awards: World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With a goal of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.

About WATG: Founded in 1945 and celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2020, WATG is one of the world’s leading design firms specializing in hospitality, entertainment + gaming, urban + mixed-use and high-end residential design. WATG’s interior design firm, Wimberly Interiors, launched in 2008, and is consistently ranked in the Top 20 by Interior Design Magazine in its Hospitality Giants survey.

Since George “Pete” Wimberly founded the firm in Honolulu in 1945, WATG has grown to offer integrated design services including Strategy, Master Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Interiors for urban, tourism and resort destinations. WATG and Wimberly Interiors have offices in Honolulu, Irvine (California), Los Angeles, New York, London, Dubai, Singapore and Shanghai and are best known for creating internationally acclaimed destinations in more than 170 countries across six continents. WATG’s projects are renowned not only for their timeless design and sense of place but also for their bottom-line success.

Throughout the decades, WATG and Wimberly Interiors have designed over 500 built projects on behalf of distinguished clients and brands such as Accor, Belmond, Blackstone Group, China Jinmao Group, China Merchant, Chimelong, Emaar, Four Seasons, Hilton Worldwide, Huafa Group, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, intu Properties, JLL, Kempinski, Keppel Land, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Marassi, Marriott International, MGM Resorts International, Minor Hotels, Mont Choisy Group, New Century Tourism Group, R.D. Olson Development, The Red Sea Development Company, Rosewood Hotel Group, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Suning, Viceroy Hotels & Resorts and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.