DDA x Vera van der Burg

Commission · Trophy design · Dutch Design Awards · 2026

The Dutch Design Awards invited me, one of last year’s winners, to design the 2026 trophies: physically passing the baton forward to the next generation. For these trophies I trained an image model on my own ceramic work and asked it to give shape to the buzzwords that surround design awards: vision, innovation, excellence. How does a model turn inflated language into form? And how does a maker?

“In this way, you can use AI to find meaning instead of getting stuck in word slop. That’s when the negotiation starts.”

At Cor Unum Ceramics in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the weightless, AI-generated shapes became handbuilt ceramic trophies, each one unique. The clay pieces went back into the model as new training data, so the work kept moving between screen and studio floor. The process became a reflection on form language: words given form, and a form language reflected back.

Photography: Anwyn Howarth (trophies, ceremony), Chloë Alyshea (studio at Cor Unum). Film stills: Blickfanger.