Self-driving cars, smart street furniture: 76 Designs of the Year nominated

The works are divided into six categories -- architecture, digital, fashion, product, graphics and transport -- and are chosen for featuring a design that "promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year."

In addition to recognizing Gehry Partners' new museum outside of Paris, the architecture shortlist includes the futuristic food market Markthal Rotterdam (MVRDV), the residential One Central Park with its vertical gardens (Atelier Jean Nouvel) and the Long Museum West Bund (Atelier Deshaus), built from a repurposed coal-loading point.

The Escher-esque Monument Valley app is joined in the digital category by sci-fi game "No Man's Sky," shopping app Disclosed, Asif Khan's MindFaces installation for the Winter Olympics and Responsive Street Furniture, an aid for visually impaired pedestrians by Ross Atkin and Jonathan Scott.

Fashion notables include Fausto Puglisi with his Cubist-inspired Fall/Winter 2014-15 womenswear, Raf Simons' high-art FW14/15 collection for Sterling Ruby and Kate and Laura Mulleavy's Star Wars homage for Rodarte's FW14/15 line.

In graphics, a proposal for a new Norwegian banknote comes in alongside the animated typeface Franchise Animated and Marcel's "Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables" supermarket campaign for reducing food waste.

Product nominees include an air-purifying billboard (University of Engineering and Technology of Peru), the BrydgeAir keyboard for iPad, the Double O LED bikelight (Paul Cocksedge Studio) and the Grow It Yourself kit from Ecovative, made of compostable mushroom building materials.

Transport nominees going up against the Google self-driving car include the BMW i8, Tesla's Model S and the MOTIV.e City Car.