The Class of 2025: Building the Future of Dutch Design, Together
Dutch Design Awards entered a new chapter-one that embraces a broader, more dynamic view of what design can achieve. With the Emerging Talent Award, DDA reaffirms that design in the Netherlands is not a fixed discipline but a living ecosystem: one that grows through exchange, reflection, and shared responsibility.
For DDA25, nominations came directly from the wider design community. The open nomination reflects the importance of passing the baton. Dutch designers should continue to see each other, support each other, and keep doors open. Design in the Netherlands thrives through collaboration and mutual recognition.
Design as Collective Intelligence
This year’s fifteen nominees — the Class of 2025 — represent a generation of designers who no longer wait for change, they build it. Their practices span storytelling, material research, performance, digital culture, and biological innovation. Yet beyond their differences, the jury saw a shared principle: design as a form of collective intelligence.
They connect disciplines rather than define them. Their work shows how design thinking operates far beyond products: it speaks to systems, to responsibility, and to the way we live together. As one juror put it: “They’re already making change. We’re here to amplify what they’re doing well.”
Design, Activism, and Agency
Across the selection, there’s a healthy friction between design and activism. Designers are using their voice to critique systems, build alternatives, and care for communities. Some do this playfully; others poetically. The jury noted that creativity itself becomes a form of activism: a way to intervene, not just interpret. “Dutch design can be more than just chairs,” one juror observed. “It can speak up, open space, and build what’s missing.”
This is a generation unafraid of complexity. They operate with empathy and clarity; often translating years of research into accessible, human expressions. What earlier generations proposed as provocation, they now implement as method.
Future-Makers of 2025
From this year’s Class of 2025, the jury selected three winners who embody the breadth of Dutch design today. Vera van der Burg, Willem de Haan, and Marten van Middelkoop & Joost Dingemans of Plasticiet were honoured during the Dutch Design Awards ceremony on Saturday, 18 October, presented by Jury Chair Borre Akkersdijk.
Read the DDA25 jury report and download it below. ⬇️