London Design Festival 2025 Medal Winners

The Lifetime Achievement Medal, supported by Fortnum & Mason, honours an individual who has made significant and fundamental contributions to the design industry over their career.

Lord Norman Foster is Founder and Executive Chairman of Foster + Partners, a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design, rooted in sustainability. Over more than five decades, the practice has pioneered a sustainable approach to architecture and urbanism through a wide range of work, from masterplans to offices, cultural buildings, airports and industrial design.

Lord Foster has established an international reputation with projects as diverse as the New German Parliament in the Reichstag in Berlin, 30 St Mary Axe, popularly known as the Gherkin, Chek Lap Kok International Airport and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong, Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, Willis Faber & Dumas Head Office in Ipswich, the Millennium Bridge in London and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich.

He has been awarded architecture’s highest accolades, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture in Japan, the RIBA Royal Gold medal and the AIA Gold medal. He is president of the Norman Foster Foundation, based in Madrid. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997 and in 1999 he was honoured with a Life Peerage, becoming Lord Foster of Thames Bank OM. 

"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.” - Lord Norman Foster

The London Design Medal, supported by Lotus, is the highest accolade bestowed upon an individual who has distinguished themselves within the industry and demonstrated consistent design excellence.

Michael Anastassiades is a Cypriot-born British designer based in London. He initially trained as a civil engineer at Imperial College, before undertaking a Master’s degree in Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art. He founded his studio in 1994, followed by his eponymous brand in 2007. His studio works across lighting, furniture, objects and spatial design. He has designed products for manufacturers, produced signature limited edition collections, and has presented solo exhibitions at galleries and museums worldwide. In 2015, Anastassiades received the Royal Designer for Industry award from the Royal Society of Arts in recognition of outstanding contribution to lighting design. He has gone on to win several awards, including the ADI Compasso d’Oro in 2020. In 2024, he received an OBE from King Charles III for services to design. 

"It’s a great honour to feel at home and be acknowledged about a dream that you never knew was going to work out.” - Michael Anastassiades 

The Design Innovation Medal celebrates entrepreneurship in all its forms, both locally and internationally. It honours an individual for whom design lies at the core of their development and success.

Sinéad Burke's life and work has been framed by her drive to make the world more accessible for all disabled and otherwise marginalised people. Sinéad is a little person with Acondraplasia, and her experience training as a teacher revealed how spaces are rarely accessible for disabled people seeking employment and success. A blog series about lack of representation in fashion led to opportunities to challenge people in power about adaptive fashion and accessible systems. Burke has spoken to leaders across the world including at the World Economic Forum, the UN, the White House, TEDNY, and many more to make the case for including disabled people in every room where decisions are made. In 2020, Burke founded the strategic consultancy 'Tilting the Lens' to build an accessible and fairer world. Along with her majority-disabled team, they create accessible public spaces and advise on recruitment, workflows, and culture changes, working with clients on 4 continents including Chanel, Gucci, Microsoft, NASA, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Burke has held honorary positions on the Irish Council of State, the Irish Future of Media Commission, chairs the ITV Cultural Advisory Council, Gucci’s Global Equity Board, and is a Contributing Editor at British Vogue. She has also worked with partners to create better pipelines for disabled creatives, this includes fully funded scholarships for disabled designers to train at Parsons School of Design in New York, and for disabled writers in Film & TV with the National Talent Academy in Ireland. 

"It is a privilege to receive the Design Innovation Award. As a majority Disabled team, we’ve seen few places acknowledge the innovation and intellectual property of lived experience. At Tilting the Lens, our design practice is rooted in co-designing with communities that have historically been designed for. Our co-design and human-centered design framework means that Disabled people are central to the design process, allowing us to collectively improve and transform systems. 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.”  - Sinéad Burke

The Emerging Design Medal recognises an individual or practice that has made a recent impact on the design scene and has an emerging practice showing design promise.

Rio Kobayashi is a London-based designer and maker. Born in Japan into a multicultural family of artisans, he trained as a furniture maker in Austria before apprenticing with workshops across Europe. In 2017, he established his East London studio, where he creates furniture, interiors, and sculptural objects shaped by material, form, and narrative. Rooted in craft traditions and shaped by contemporary influences, his pieces often carry subtle colour and detail. Over the past decade, he has developed a refreshing body of work in a class by itself. Playful at heart, Kobayashi approaches fine craftsmanship with a crisp twist of humour. He experiments expansively with fabrication techniques based on solid knowledge in materials. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the London Design Festival, Milan Design Week, Design Miami, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Design Museum in London, and in galleries across Europe and the United States. Kobayashi has collaborated with global brands, and his practice has been widely featured in international publications. His work is held in both private collections and in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

“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.” - Rio Kobayashi