COOPER HEWITT CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF THE NATIONAL DESIGN AWARDS AND ANNOUNCES 2025 WINNERS
Posted on January 28, 2025
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced it will celebrate 25 years of the prestigious National Design Awards program and named the 2025 Award winners.
Launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the National Design Awards and its associated public programs seek to increase national awareness of the impact of design in everyday life. Now in their 25th year, the National Design Awards have evolved and adapted over time but stayed true to core Smithsonian values of innovation and civic service.
This year’s winners, selected by a multidisciplinary jury, are recognized for design innovation and impact in improving the world, and will be honored at an awards celebration Thursday, April 3.
“Design touches all aspects of our lives every single day—from the buildings we live, learn and work in, to the physical and digital systems that deliver our basic services, the clothes we wear, the spaces we gather in or the creativity and beauty that help us understand ourselves as a nation—and yet design’s undeniable influence can go unseen,” said Maria Nicanor, director of the museum. “Since 2000, Cooper Hewitt has aimed to change that, shining a light on the most influential and powerful design of our era. This year, we recognize 2025’s exceptional winners, but also the hundreds of past winners and jury members who form the vast network of thinkers and practitioners actively shaping our everyday.”
This year’s National Design Award recipients are:
Kim Hastreiter, Design Visionary
ilumiNACIÓN by Resilient Power Puerto Rico, Climate Action
Nu Goteh, Emerging Designer
Michael Maltzan Architecture, Architecture
Matt Willey, Communication Design
Emerging Objects, Digital Design
Melitta Baumeister, Fashion Design
Little Wing Lee, Interior Design
TERREMOTO, Landscape Architecture
Jules Sherman, Product Design
“The National Design Awards evaluate the state of design as it crosses 10 different categories, from architecture to climate action to fashion design to product design, and this year’s winners show how empowering, inclusive and diverse these disciplines of design can be,” said Maurice Cox, chair of the 2025 National Design Awards jury. “On the 25th anniversary of this award, I am proud that the winners are increasingly a reflection of who we are in America and who we hope to be.”
For a quarter of a century, with a roster of more than 200 alumni, the National Design Awards program has reflected and forecasted the indelible impact of design in improving the world. The past 25 years have witnessed marked advances in the fields of digital technology, materials and techniques, which have been harnessed by National Design Award winners to build a more inclusive, sustainable and equitable future. This 25th class of award winners are continuing to push forward inspired ideas and innovation in their respective design disciplines.
The official 25th anniversary presentation of the National Design Awards will take place at a seated dinner Thursday, April 3, at the James Burden Mansion, overlooking the museum’s Carnegie Mansion home. In recognition of this milestone year, the awards ceremony will be followed by Cooper Hewitt’s first-ever House Party, to be held at the museum, which welcomes the larger design community to celebrate with National Design Award winners from the past 25 years.
NATIONAL DESIGN AWARDS JURY
National Design Award winners are selected by a multidisciplinary jury of design practitioners, educators and leaders. Nominations are open to all and are also solicited from experts from a wide range of design and related fields.
The 2025 National Design Awards jury was chaired by Maurice D. Cox, the Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The jury included Miren Arzalluz,?director of Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de Paris and recently appointed director general of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Gail Bichler, creative director of The New York Times Magazine; Carson Chan, director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment at the Museum of Modern Art; Llisa Demetrios, chief curator of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity; Michelle Millar Fisher, the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and designer Fernando Laposse.
ABOUT COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM
Cooper Hewitt is America’s design museum. Inclusive, innovative and experimental, the museum’s dynamic exhibitions, education programs, master’s program, publications and online resources inspire, educate and empower people through design. An integral part of the Smithsonian Institution—the world’s largest museum, education and research complex—Cooper Hewitt is located on New York City’s Museum Mile in the landmarked Carnegie Mansion. Steward of one of the world’s most diverse and comprehensive design collections—over 215,000 objects that range from an ancient Egyptian faience cup dating to about 1100 BC to contemporary 3D-printed objects and digital code—Cooper Hewitt welcomes everyone to discover the importance of design and its power to change the world.
