A new edition of the NABA Design Award has just come to a close—the competition created to showcase and celebrate the work produced by students from the Design Area, with the awards ceremony held on June 10 2025 at the NABA Milan Campus, led by Claudio Larcher (NABA Design Area Leader), Valentina Dalla Costa (MAs in Design Area Course Leader), and Germana De Michelis (BA in Design Course Leader at the Milan campus).
The event was also streamed live on the NABA YouTube channel, where it remains available to watch.
NABA Design Award 2025: the winning projects
An idea by Claudio Larcher, the NABA Design Award is the prize dedicated to the best projects produced during the past Academic Year. The ceremony celebrated the work of students from the BA in Design, the MAs in Product and Service Design, Interior Design and Social Design , and the Academic Master in Italian Design.
These are the awards assigned by category:
- Interior Project – BA: “Cattle Bliss Track” by Zhihan Zong, Tong Zhou
- Product Project – BA: “Bloombrella” by Vinayan Ravikumar
- Interior Thesis – BA: “Quintessenza” by Chethra Iotti
- Product Thesis – BA: “MK 6.4” by Sebastian Lopez
- Interior Project – MA: Rifugio “Gioia Dolomitica” by Maria-Madalina Costache
- Product and Service Project – MA: “THE TIMELESS” by Samuela Borelli, Alessia Clemente, Antonino Leone, Jinyue Wang
- Social Project – MA: “Quello che non c’è” by Marisol Beltrami, Camilla Capocelli, Adipa Klomchitcharoen, Claudia Marangio, Donatella Taraborelli
- Interior Thesis – MA: “Più di mucche e mele” by Alice Roma
- Product and Service Thesis – MA: “Tyto, unicità dell’individuo e nuovi approcci all’apprendimento” by Irene Ferrari
- Social Thesis – MA: “PUF. Un generatore di processi sociali di circolarità” by Martina Petiti
- Photography: “Damnum” by Andrea Angileri
- Drawing: “Sketches of Milanese, Moscow and Saint Petersburg Streets” by Victoria Kirkorova
- Technique, Materials and Innovation: “Tensio” by Lorenzo Consonni, Lorenzo Minari, Matteo Soardi, Liu Weizhao
- Urban Design: “Drop-Polis” by Sara Allegretti, Ambar Giordano De La Rosa, Giulia Zini
And here are the Special Awards:
- Jury Prize: “INNER FRAGILITY - IN HER FRAGILITY” by Noemi Aondio
- Best Project of the Year 2025: “Tiresia” by Lorenzo Ragni
- Social Mention, selected by the NABA Instagram community: “SPLITIT” by Simone Barattin, Greta Burocco, Ottavia Costa, Maria Cristina De Luca, Konstantino Nioulikos, Gianluca Pasotti
H2: NABA Design Award 2025: the jury and the catalogue
The winners in each category were selected by a jury composed of professionals and journalists from the design world, including Monica Dalla Riva (Vice President Customer Experience and Design, Deutsche Telekom AG), Matteo Battiston (Chief Design Officer for EssilorLuxottica), Luis Angarita (Head of Industrial Design, Co-director Master Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Associate Professor ASU) and Mirko Zardini (Architect, author and curator), as well as the Academy representatives Claudio Larcher, Germana De Michelis, Valentina Dalla Costa and Luca Poncellini (Design and Applied Arts Department Head).
Once again this year, all the best projects from the Academy’s Design Area have been collected in a single catalogue, with graphic design by Atto, created from a reflection carried out by the Design Area on its own values. As a result, seven key words have been chosen to represent NABA Design, its unique characteristics and its identity: Imagination, Rhythm, Relationship, Mistake, Listening, Responsibility, Role. The Academy has decided to share these, turning them into a small collective dictionary where each word takes shape not only from its etymology, but also from the living experience of those who teach, design, make decisions, discuss and grow on our campuses.
NABA Design Award 2025: the main partner, the event identity and the prizes
The main partner of this edition of the NABA Design Award is INSTAX by Fujifilm, which presented the winners of the Best Project of the Year and Jury Prize with a selection of awards. The visual identity for this edition of the NABA Design Award was created by Sofia d’Andrea (Design Academic Assistant). The prizes for the winners were designed by Claudio Larcher and produced within the Design Area laboratories under the supervision of Carmelo Zocco (Design Laboratory Manager), using plastic scraps from projects created by students for the Salone del Mobile 2025—fully in line with the Academy’s commitment to sustainability and circular design.