Designer Michael Anastassiades has been awarded this year’s London Design Medal, with architect Norman Foster, activist Sinéad Burke and emerging designer Rio Kobayashi also recognised.
The winner of this year’s London Design Medal, the award scheme’s highest accolade, has been revealed as industrial designer Anastassiades, who will receive the prize at a dedicated awards ceremony next Monday.
The four design medals are awarded each year during London Design Festival (LDF), which kicks off on Saturday. Alongside Anastassiades, Foster was awarded the lifetime achievement medal, Kobayashi was awarded the emerging design medal and Burke won the design innovation medal.
Top and above: Michael Anastassiades is the winner of the 2025 London Design Medal
Anastassiades founded his first studio in 1994 following multidisciplinary studies in both engineering and design at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.
He works across furniture, lighting, objects and spatial design and has designed for brands including Flos, Herman Miller and Bang & Olufsen, and received an OBE in 2023 for his services to British design.
“I didn’t fit in a mould of anybody; there were no designers that I could relate to,” Anastassiades told Dezeen in a 2020 interview, explaining how he wrestled with finding a career path that suited him.
On winning this year’s London Design Medal, the designer said, “It’s a great honour to feel at home and be acknowledged about a dream that you never knew was going to work out”.
Rio Kobayashi has won the emerging designer medal
This year’s emerging design medal, which “recognises an individual or practice that has made a recent impact on the design scene and has an emerging practice showing design promise”, has been awarded to Japanese designer and former Dezeen Awards judge Kobayashi.
Spanning interiors, furniture and sculptural objects, Kobayashi’s eponymous studio was founded in east London in 2017.
The designer balances traditional craft techniques with contemporary influences and created his first timber pavilion for last year’s LDF, based on his childhood home.
“Playful at heart, Kobayashi approaches fine craftsmanship with a crisp twist of humour,” said the festival organisers. “He experiments expansively with fabrication techniques based on solid knowledge in materials.”
“I am truly honoured to receive this recognition from the design community, alongside inspirational figures who have forged new paths of creativity for the future,” said Kobayashi, on being awarded the medal.
The design innovation medal has been awarded to Sinéad Burke
The design innovation medal “celebrates entrepreneurship in all its forms, both locally and internationally”. This year’s winner is Irish writer, educator and disability rights activist Burke, known for her 2017 TED Talk Why Design Should Include Everyone.
Burke founded the strategic consultancy Tilting the Lens in 2020, run by a majority-disabled team who work to make public spaces accessible and advise on recruitment, workflows, and culture changes in workplaces and other shared environments.
Straddling design, fashion, technology and the arts, Burke is a contributing editor to British Vogue and has spoken at the United Nations, America’s White House and the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
“It is a privilege to receive the design innovation award,” said the activist. “As a majority Disabled team, we’ve seen few places acknowledge the innovation and intellectual property of lived experience.”
“[At Tilting the Lens], our focus is for design innovation to be multi-modal, to move beyond compliance, and to create the conditions for Disabled people to be successful,” she added.
Norman Foster has won this year’s lifetime achievement medal
Following his milestone 90th birthday in June, British architect Foster has won this year’s lifetime achievement medal.
The medal, which “honours an individual who has made significant and fundamental contributions to the design industry over their career”, marks over five decades of the architect’s global practice Foster + Partners.
Foster is responsible for some of London’s most recognisable landmarks, such as 30 St Mary Axe, popularly known as the “Gherkin”, and the city’s Millennium Bridge. Over his lifetime, Foster has been the regular recipient of architecture’s highest accolades, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the RIBA Royal Gold medal and the AIA Gold medal.
On winning the lifetime achievement medal, the architect said, “I am deeply honoured to receive this special award.”
“Since my early childhood, design has been an integral part of my life, and I feel extremely privileged to have indulged in this passion every day of my life since,” he added.
Previous winners of the London Design Medal, which was established in 2007, include makeup artist Pat McGrath, structural engineer and AKT II co-founder Hanif Kara and costume designer Sandy Powell.
The photography is courtesy of LDF.
The London Design Festival takes place from 13 to 21 September 2025. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
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