Czech Design Week has concluded with the Czech Design Award: Ploom Edition. This year's awards recognised innovation and work with tradition

Since its inception, the Czech Design Award has been inextricably linked with the Czech Design Week festival and annually represents its culmination. The awards recognise new talents, young authors and studios that are not afraid to push the boundaries of the field. This year, the competition, to which designers could apply for the first time not only within the framework of the Czech Design Week festival, was devoted to the theme of Tradition, which became a challenge to reinterpret cultural and craft heritage through contemporary design. The special edition Ploom Edition gave space not only to experiments, but also to projects with a strong social overlap.

Four winners emerged from the competition, who received the prize on Sunday, September 14, as part of the Czech Design Week festival. The main winner that received the most points from the prize jury is the free artistic group DVEPERLY, composed of Veronika Dusilová, Pavlína Šváchová and Kateřina Weis, created a collection of porcelain jewelry boxes Sweet & Stitched, which reinterpreted the traditional soup bowl, a symbol of household, care and female role, into the form of a contemporary design object.

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With designer Adam Vesely the jury was impressed by his HeadNest project — a knitted helmet designed for people with cochlear implants to support hearing, which is not suitable for conventional helmets. Another winning designer, Adela Lakomá, addressed the jury with Heirloom glass objects paying tribute to female endurance. Lakomá also incorporated elements into the objects resembling parts of costumes from region Haná in central Moravia, where the author came from.

The fourth winner of the Czech Design Award: Ploom Edition is young studio Licht (Linda Suchanová and Jan J. Richtár), who succeeded with the design of the modular system e3, which connects the bar and the conversation chair in motifs based on the tradition of domestic bars of the seventies and eighties.

This year's winners were decided by an expert jury consisting of leading Czech and foreign design personalities, including František Jungvirt, Jan Černý, Kasia Fornalska, Jan Bican, Tomáš Kučera, Klára Sofie Stříhavková, Magdalena Šťastníková and Lukáš Pipek. The partner of this year's Czech Design Award is the Ploom brand, which also awarded the main winner, the DVEPRLY group, a cash prize of CZK 50,000.

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In addition to the main awards Czech Design Award: Ploom Edition, two special festival prizes were awarded by the organizers of the Czech Design Week festival this year. This year, the festival prize for the best installation, which is traditionally awarded to the exhibiting designer, brand or studio whose panel installation in the Mánes Gallery most captivated the festival visitors, went to ceramic and porcelain designer Nonna Lorenz, who presented her colorful collection of Parazit porcelain vases during the festival in a floral installation.

This year, the organizers also had the honor of presenting the Festival Award for her contribution to Czech design to the pedagogue, publicist and curator Lence Žižková, who has been shaping the Czech design scene for decades. Žižková is the Director of Design Cabinet CZ and the founder of the Czech International Student Design Award 2020, which has given space to hundreds of young talents.

“This year's Czech Design Award shows that the theme of tradition does not have to mean a return to the past, but it can be a challenge to find new ways and innovative solutions. The winning projects prove that young designers can work with cultural heritage sensitively, but at the same time boldly and in an original way,” said Lukáš Pipek, Director of the Czech Design Award and founder of Czech Design Week.

The Czech Design Award was created to support talented creators in all sectors of design. The award in the form of a design vase was designed by František Jungvirt. The partner of the awards is also the AJETO glassworks, where are awards annually realized.

From September 11 to 14, the Czech Design Week 2025 festival presented the most current of domestic and foreign works in Prague. The main exhibition pavilions at the Mánes Gallery and the Clam-Gallas Palace were filled by nearly a hundred designers, brands and studios who showed a wide spectrum of contemporary design — from glass, porcelain and jewellery to fashion, product and interior design to technological innovation and sustainable approaches. The Clam-Gallas Palace has hosted several author exhibitions in addition to the New Generation exhibition, involving the emerging generation of artists and designers.

At the same time, the festival connected the main stages with the iconic places of Prague and dozens of design showrooms and concept stores, thus offering visitors a unique route across the city center. The Slavia Café was a novelty of this year with an installation by František Jungvirt and a special menu inspired by the tradition of the 1930s, complemented by the evening bar Forbina. Skydrift exhibition by glass artist František Jungvirt and artists Jiří Bartoš and Jan Slanina in the courtyard of the Clam-Gallas Palace is extended until 1 October.