Swarovski Designers of the Future Award

For the fifth consecutive year, the Swarovski Designers of the Future Award honors a select group of emerging designers who exemplify new directions in design culture. These young creatives work beyond pure product design, embracing conceptually or technologically vanguard approaches and combining multiple design disciplines.

Exploring innovative sustainable design solutions in the categories of lighting, home décor, and architectural surfaces and building materials, these next-generation talents have the opportunity to present newly commissioned works that implement Swarovski’s latest crystal technologies to an influential audience at Design Miami/ Basel.

This year’s award winners include Shanghai-born installation artist Juju Wang, who has been inspired by Swarovski’s key ingredients and heritage; Netherlands-based designers Studio Klarenbeek & Dros, who challenge the use of space by experimenting with 3-D crystal printing; and Raffe Burrell, a London-based high-end bespoke lighting designer. The designers were invited to Swarovski’s historic base in the Austrian Tyrol to discover the brand’s archive, laboratories, and cultural programs. Given full access to Swarovski’s facilities, they were commissioned to create bold new works that respond to sustainability and commerciality while exploiting the scientific and aesthetic properties of crystal. To realize their vision, the designers worked closely with Swarovski’s engineers and master cutters, whose expertise draws on the brand’s almost 125-year heritage of crystal craftsmanship and original thinking.

Swarovski was founded on an innovation, and today it remains a design-driven company. Its collaborations act as a platform to push the boundaries of design, using the multifaceted capacity of crystal to inspire creative exploration. The Swarovski Designers of the Future Award showcases how extraordinary craftsmanship, combined with cutting-edge technology and visionary design, results in truly imaginative new work.