Panerai Presents Yves Béhar the Design Visionary Award – 2015 Design Miami

Miami, a hot bed for art, life and fashion, was home to the Design Miami/ Design Visionary Award presented by Officine Panerai. This award is celebrates the most significant, tangible, durable contributions made in the field of design at an international level. Officine Panerai CEO, Anegelo Bonati, was on hand to present this award to Swiss Designer Yves Béhar.

Mr. Béhar along with winning this prestigious award, was awarded a one of a kind version of the Panerai PAM335 Luminor 1950’s 10 Day GMT Automatic Ceramica. The watch presented by Mr. Bonati, featured a personalized engraving of the name of the award, the year, and Mr. Béhar’s name.

After the event Mr. Bonati, Craig Robins, Co-Founder of Design Miami/, and Rodman Primack, Exexcutive Director of Design Miami/, hosted cocktails and a dinner to celebrate the winner. The cocktail hour was held at the new Panerai Design District Boutique which was designed by the world renowned Spanish Designer Patricia Urquiola.

2015 was the first year for the Design Miami/ and Officine Panerai partnership and Mr. Béhar was chosen because of “his holistic design vision and especially the substantial impact he has made through humanitarian projects, such as the INDEX-award winning One Laptop per Child and See Better to Learn Better”. Yves Béhar, born in Lausanne, Switzerland, is a designer and entrepreneur.

Along with the award presented to Mr. Béhar, Officine Panerai has chosen to make a financial contribution to several causes which are personally significant to him. The programs that he has chosen are the San Francisco MoMA Education fund, in support of the arts education in his own community; and SPRING Accelerator, which is a global program supporting businesses who can improve the lives of adolescent girls.

From the looks of the event, the 1st year was a complete success for the collaboration between Officine Panerai and Design Miami/. I am very sure that Panerai is going to play a much larger role in the coming years in the Miami art scene, especially with their flagship boutique being the Miami Design District.