In late April, thousands of creatives from around the world convened in Berlin for the iF Design Awards. The annual honors, first bestowed in 1954, recognize the best of design across many categories including branding and communication design, packaging, user experience, product design, and architecture. Winners were selected by a jury of 129 renowned practitioners in these fields from 21 countries.

iF Design CEO Uwe Cremering, who presided over the festivities at Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast, said “Design increasingly shapes how we build the future—how we take responsibility, use resources wisely, and ensure that new technologies, including AI, serve people rather than replace them.”

Award recipients ran the gamut, from students and independent designers with small studios to large companies like Samsung, Nissan, and Lufthansa, which, over the decades, have racked up dozens, even hundreds, of iF Design Awards. And all, with rare exception, were in attendance.

A special honor went to Spanish-born, Milan-based Patricia Urquiola, 65, who received the iF Design Lifetime Achievement Award. Known for her characteristic interior design and products for furniture makers including Cassina, B&B Italia, and Haworth, she has also worked with brands such as Flos, Louis Vuitton, MaxMara, and Duravit. iF recognized her distinctive approach to design, which “combines sensuality, material exploration, and technological innovation.” Urquiola follows in the footsteps of 2025 winner Norman Foster, and Dieter Rams, who—making his final public appearance—was the inaugural honoree in 2024.

Within architecture, dozens of buildings were honored across categories that include public, residential, retail, educational, hospitality, and mixed-use projects, but only a few were designated with the gold award. Among them was the Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, by New York–based REX. The citation notes the Lindemann’s “revolutionary flexibility, enabled by its mechanized gantry, lift, reflector, and riser systems, [which] makes it both a robust academic tool and the world’s most automated performance hall.”

Sou Fujimoto’s dazzling Grand Ring at last year’s Osaka World Expo was also honored with gold. Built using a fusion of modern construction techniques and traditional Nuki joints—like those found in Japanese shrines and temples—its elevated circulation served as the main route for visitors. According to the jury, “The CLT construction and demountable detailing demonstrate true circular thinking.”

A final gold winner also had lofty sustainability goals, but at a much smaller scale. Architect Kazunori Sakai’s 1,200-square-foot house on Japan’s Amami Island is completely off-grid. “When I began designing my own house, I never imagined it would eventually be disconnected from the power grid,” Sakai says. “Yet, as environmental degradation accelerates and extreme weather becomes the norm, that choice became inevitable.”

Inspired by the region’s historical buntō (multi-volume) layout, the house consists of five independent volumes—each serving a distinct function, such as bath, bedroom, and storage—arranged geometrically to create in-between spaces that serve as shared living areas. The roof form reinterprets the local corrugated-metal and ) irimoya (hip-and-gable roof) profiles, integrating layers of insulation, ventilation, and light control to respond to Amami’s climate.

Getting the energy equation right, however, took some trial and error. “The power went out a few times,” Sakai admits. “My wife was very mad at me.” But after adding more photovoltaics—there are also plans to add a house-scaled wind turbine—the autonomous dwelling allows his young family of four to live comfortably without external electricity or air-conditioning, even under the island’s harsh subtropical conditions. By responding to the unique climate and cultural ecology of its island setting, the house, according to its architect, “quietly reexamines what it means to ‘inhabit’ in the age of environmental uncertainty.”