“How do you translate contemporary social problems into inspiring projects? This question is central to the work of all our nominees. To us, it’s important that a designer take a leading role in the debate around the public domain. Our nominees show how a clear vision and a strategic approach result in appealing projects and collaborations, and in this way they encourage other designers and artists.”

Nominees:
Rietveld Landscape, Vacant NL, ‘where architecture meets ideas’
Waag Society, Open design
Jeanne van Heeswijk, Freehouse

Ginette Blom and Jacqueline Moors work together as Blom&Moors. They focus on assignments in the context of the city, the landscape and the semipublic building. For ProRail, Blom&Moors developed a plan for the interior design of Dutch railway stations. It encompasses principles for placement as well as for the design of a large number of objects. The new look is designed to strengthen the individual character of each station. Pilot projects can currently be seen on the platforms at Leiden Centraal and Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA. Blom studied subjects including public space design at the Utrecht School of the Arts and taught public space design there as a senior lecturer from 2004 to 2011. Moors studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Man and Public Space department and at the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht.
www.blom-moors.nl

“As a scout, I’ve focused on interesting types of design research and innovative design processes. I think it's important for the profession’s image that leading examples of both become well known among a wide audience and are discussed at a professional level. Together, my nominees embody a number of attitudes that result in high-quality designs. They’re curious, investigative, cooperative, generous and individualistic, and they think big. Finally, I also paid attention to some subjects that have generated interesting fields of activity for designers in recent years: social design, food design, crowdsourcing and interdisciplinary alliances.”

Nominees:
Matthijs Munnik, Microscopic Opera
Monique van Heist, hellofashion
Ester van de Wiel, Eetbaar Landschap, NuHier and Werkplaats Buijtenland

Sophie Krier graduated cum laude with a degree in Man and Identity from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 1999. She has her own design practice, Atelier Sophie Krier, where she explores the boundaries of the field in independently initiated projects and commissioned projects. She is fascinated by the design process and searches for ways to emancipate it, keeping in mind the question “What is generous inquiry?” She focuses on film, writing and temporary social interventions. Krier is the initiator of Field Essays, a new series of publications on the dynamics of design processes, and she regularly curates symposiums and design events. She was head of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s designLAB from 2004 to 2009. www.sophiekrier.com

“The question I continually asked myself during the nomination process was: How is this design relevant right now? For the Rotterdam Design Prize, apart from a product's artistic qualities and whether the meaning of the design transcends the individual solution, I believe it's important that the design, position or solution be meaningful at this exact moment and that it take the present as a subject and a point of departure.”

Nominees:
Piet Hein Eek, The Factory
Hans Gremmen, various photography books and projects
Catalogtree, ‘Money & Speed - Inside the Black Box’

Joost Grootens earned a degree in architectural design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and is a self-taught graphic designer. He won the Rotterdam Design Prize in 2009 for his widely praised atlas designs. In his 2010 book I Swear I Use No Art at All (Uitgeverij 010, 2010), a monograph in the style of an atlas, he depicts elements of his design processes, ranging from people and places to ingredients such as paper types, binding methods and fonts. Grootens is an instructor at the Design Academy Eindhoven and was recently named head of its master’s programme in information design.
www.grootens.nl