Dutch designer Maarten Baas is this year’s winner of the Designer of the Year Award at Design Miami. New work, commissioned for the award, along with a retrospective of Baas’s work, are presented at the December edition of Design Miami.

Each December, the prestigious Award is presented to a designer who has made a significant contribution to the progression of design. The Designer of the Year must demonstrate a long history of consistent work, as well as outstanding work created within the last twelve months. Now in its fifth year, the Award has gone to an impressive list of esteemed designers, including Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Tokujin Yoshioka and the Campana Brothers.

At only 31 years of age, Maarten Baas is a strikingly young designer who has impacted the world of design in an unprecedented short period of time. “The decision to give the award to someone as young as Baas might seem controversial, but he has already changed the course of design history,” Design Miami/ Associate Director Wava Carpenter comments. “His work has transformed the way collectors understand the landscape of contemporary design and has opened the market to a younger generation of designers. Baas pioneered the way with his first collection Smoke, his graduation project which became an international design sensation through his collaboration with New York gallerist Murray Moss.”

Design Miami director Ambra Medda adds. “He has allowed more people to accept and respect young design. But he is also a truly phenomenal talent who has all the qualities of a great designer and whose work is consistently strong and varied. He has a great sense of imagination and trusts himself to explore his ideas to the maximum, constantly evolving while anchoring his work in a craft-oriented approach. He has kept the design community gripped, like a good movie where you can’t take your eyes off the screen, where each project is like one excellent scene after another.”

Photos James Harris