October 2026 · Eindhoven
Five days inside the Evoluon: NEXT GEN DESIGN Residency Eindhoven names its winners
Ten young European designers turned Next Nature Museum into their workspace during Dutch Design Week. Their brief: Sustainable Digital Futures.
While hundreds of Dutch Design Week visitors walked through Next Nature Museum, part of the building quietly became a working studio for the NEXT GEN DESIGN residents. From 19 to 23 October, ten designers from across Europe, all winners of the Next Gen Design Open Call, worked here in five international pairs.
Why Next Nature Museum
Few places fit the theme Sustainable Digital Futures better. Next Nature Museum explores where humans, nature and technology meet and challenge each other. For the residents, that meant the subject of their brief was all around them.
The week in five days
Monday 19 October — Arrive and explore. The residency kicked off with an introduction to the theme, a tour of Next Nature Museum and a welcome dinner.
Tuesday 20 October — Input. Two NEXT GEN DESIGN EDU Talks fed the brief. Artist and researcher Sondi spoke about worldbuilding and how power and narratives work in digital spaces and video games. Designer Vera van der Burg, winner of the Dutch Design Award for Emerging Talent 2025, showed how she treats AI as a creative material rather than a shortcut. Between the talks, the teams formed and started shaping their first ideas. The same day, the exhibition Futures Worth Living opened to the public.
Wednesday 21 October — Discovering Dutch Design Week. A day outside the studio to explore DDW and the city, with an optional tour of the Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show.
Thursday 22 October — Prototyping. Each team built an ‘artefact’ from the future it had imagined. In the afternoon, they tested their story on Elli Schindler (designaustria) and Pepijn Zurburg (What Design Can Do), then refined their projects for the final presentations.
Friday 23 October — Present. Each team had three minutes to present its project to the jury. After deliberation, the winners were announced at the closing ceremony, followed by a farewell lunch.
The Winners
1st place – Marija Kucurski & Valdis Steinarsdottir — €1,000
2nd place – Vega Tapia Borrego & Ibrahim Beqiri — €600
3rd place – Lena Muri & Sebastian Melenge Valladares — €400
The jury, Elli Schindler (designaustria) and Pepijn Zurburg (What Design Can Do), chose the winners after the teams’ five-minute presentations.
The winning project: Boredom
Marija Kucurski and Valdis Steinarsdottir see boredom not as wasted time, but as a useful signal. Their project turns it into a device for healthier habits. It helps users recognise their own personal stages of boredom, use those moments to reflect, and translate each stage into a different way of working.
Five pairs working on sustainable design
The pairs were mixed on purpose: NEXT GEN DESIGN is about exchange between young designers from across Europe. In five days, each team had to find a shared language, divide the work and build something together. That spirit matched DDW’s 2026 theme, R.A.W. (Rebel Authentic Worth), which celebrates the unpolished and the experimental: first versions, works in progress, ideas still taking shape.
The residency in Eindhoven was made possible by
Poppy Robathon, workshop host
Elli Schindler (designaustria), jury member
Pepijn Zurburg (What Design Can Do), jury member
Sondi and Vera van der Burg, EDU Talk speakers
Next Nature Museum, host venue
What Design Can Do, organiser