About

Contact Michael McCoy
info@michaelmccoydesign.com

Michael McCoy is the recipient of the Smithsonian’s first Design Minds National Design Award with Katherine McCoy for, in the words of the museum “affecting a paradigm shift in the design profession”. His influential designs include the new Horizon LED Light for Humanscale (with Peter Stathis), the million-selling “Bulldog Chair” for Knoll and the Place Airport Seating for Arconas (with Curt Fentress).

He has received many international design awards for his work for Humanscale, Knoll, Philips, Steelcase and NEC including Germany’s Red Dot Award, the IDSA Gold Award, The Spark Award, London’s FX Award, the ID Magazine Best of Category, the IBD Award and The Interiors Magazine Best Office Design. His designs are in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, The Denver Art Museum and The Cranbrook Art Museum.

In recognition of his influence on design education he, with his wife Katherine, has received the American Center for Design Education Award, the Industrial Designers Society of America Education Award, and an honorary Doctorate from the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1994 they received the prestigious Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design given to 6 architects and designers annually.

A principal in McCoy & McCoy Inc. in Colorado and Fahnstrom/McCoy Design Consultants in Chicago, he was Co-chair of the Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art for 23 years, Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Royal College of Art in London from 1994-1996 and Senior Lecturer at IIT’s Institute of Design in Chicago from 1996-2003.

His strategies for interpreting technology and information through design form have been widely published and he lectures internationally on the subject. He is the author of numerous papers on design and is co-author of Cranbrook Design:The New Discourse published by Rizzoli.