2025 Design Competition

The 2025 Design Challenge

WHAT WOULD YOU DESIGN to help everyone feel at home in your COMMUNITY?

Home is so much more than shelter. It is where we seek belonging, comfort, and safety. Designers shape our sense of home through the spaces, products, and experiences that surround us. But home also extends beyond physical walls. Designers, urban planners, policy makers, and community members all contribute to how we experience home through the broader built environment and social systems. These designs have the power to connect us to the past and inspire a more welcoming future.

The 2025 National High School Design Competition challenged students to use design to help everyone feel at home in their communities. Think about small tweaks that can improve daily life or larger changes that can have a broad impact. Draw on your unique experiences and knowledge of your community—whether it’s your neighborhood, school, social group, or another element of your life. You might address topics like comfort, unstable housing, environmental impacts, or accessibility. Consider various design approaches, including architecture, urban planning, user interface design, fashion, product design, and more.

The Selection Process

In Stage One, participants identified an opportunity to use design to support their community and designed a solution. Participants created a sketch of their idea and described how the design addressed the challenge. Cooper Hewitt selected three finalists to proceed to Stage Two of the Design Competition through an anonymous judging based on the criteria of innovation, impact, relevance, and communication.

During Stage Two, the three finalists furthered their designs using the Stage Two Brief document and participated in a mentor call during April 2025 for initial feedback. Finalists then traveled to New York City to attend Mentor Weekend at Cooper Hewitt on May 3-4, 2025. They took a deeper dive into the design process, learned more about addressing challenges through design, explored the design field, and worked on their final presentations. Then the finalists participated in the virtual Judging Weekend on June 7-8, 2025 and presented to the esteemed judges.

Design Competition Resources

Interested in using the 2025 challenge in your classroom? Explore these resources:

Design Process Tips and Cheat Sheet
Design Terms and Strategies
Youth Designing for Communities: Explore how students in Michigan used the design process to ensure everyone feels at home in their community.
2025 Design Competition Flyer

MAKING HOME—SMITHSONIAN DESIGN TRIENNIAL

This year’s design competition is inspired by Cooper Hewitt’s exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. Explore the digital exhibition to discover how designers, architects, artists, and their collaborators are looking at design and the meaning of home today. You’ll find there are many ways to approach this year’s challenge. Below are a few examples:

How might we use design to share cultural knowledge and strengthen our communities?

Comida, conversación y comunidad by East Jordan Middle/High School: This series of events supported exchange and connection between high school students and Spanish-speaking immigrants in rural Michigan.
Hālau Kūkulu Hawai’i: A Home That Builds Multitudes by After Oceanic Built Environments Lab and Leong Leong Architecture: This scalable design uses Indigenous building techniques and respect for the land (aina, that which feeds) to support cultural, ecological, and political recovery in Hawaii.
Welcome to Territory by Lenape Center with Joe Baker: This project explores the cultural heritage and history of the Lenape people. It features a contemporary interpretation of Lenape turkey-feather capes that honors the garments’ intricate craftsmanship and cultural significance.

How might we use design to honor our community’s heritage and protect stories?

The Underground Library: An Archive of Our Truth by Black Artists + Designers Guild (BADG): This space celebrates the power of literacy and home libraries and aims to protect futures that are at risk of being erased. It is filled with cultural heirlooms and examples of the African diaspora in art and design.
Casa Desenterrada/Exhuming Home by Ronald Rael: This installation serves as a tribute to the Indigenous people who were enslaved in southern Colorado and their descendants.
Ebb + Flow by Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE): This project gathers stories and sounds from the Everglades. It honors its cultural and environmental heritage while fostering a deeper connection to the region.

How might we design living spaces that foster connection, support well-being, and ensure inclusivity?

Aging and the Meaning of Home by Hord Coplan Macht: This immersive space is designed to support people with physical and mild cognitive impairments as they grow older.
The Architecture of Re-Entry by Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS): These modular transitional housing units with shared common spaces are designed for (and with feedback from) individuals who were formerly incarcerated.
Dream Homes by PIN-UP: This film explores contemporary LGBTQIA+ communal living spaces, highlighting how these intentional communities create a sense of home.

To be notified of future competitions, email us at
DesignCompetition@si.edu.

The 2025 Judges

A diverse panel of creative experts met with the finalists to review and discuss their designs, and selected the winner on June 8, 2025.

The 2025 Judges were:

Liz Danzico, Vice President of Design, Microsoft AI and Founding Chair, MFA Interaction Design, School of Visual Arts
Maria Nicanor, Director, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Omar Nobil, Senior Vice President of Design and Brand Creative, Design Within Reach
Ainsley Romero, Brand Designer, Pinterest
Jules Sherman, 2025 National Design Award Winner, Biodesign Program Director, Children’s National Hospital, and Principal, JS Design Group, LLC.

The 2025 Mentors

The finalists attended an in-person Mentor Weekend at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City on May 3-4, 2025 with mentors:

Curry Hackett (Lead Mentor), Transdisciplinary Designer and Professor of Practice, City College of New York Spitzer School of Architecture
Ashley Olivia Gray, Product Research, Netflix
Kayla Montes de Oca, Associate Professor of Architecture, The Cooper Union

Special Guests

Shruthi Andru, UX Designer, Adobe
Mariana Conde, Senior Associate, Technology Transformation Design & Innovation, PWC
Eleanor Lewis, 2023 National High School Design Competition Winner; Student, Columbia

The 2025 Competition Winner

Congratulations to Advika Kalla for being named the winner of the 2025 National High School Design Competition! Advika is a rising senior at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) in Durham, North Carolina.

Her project, The Resilient Home, proposes to rebuild the town of Chimney Rock, North Carolina after devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in 2024 with a design that pays homage to the indigenous and colonial history of the region. The design restores Chimney Rock’s sense of home by honoring its cultural history while adapting to climate challenges. The Resilient Home is a design framework that blends tradition with sustainability and sets a model for disaster impacted mountain communities. Watch the presentations of the finalists and explore the projects of all the finalists and honorable mentions.

The 2025 Finalists

Congratulations to the finalists, who were announced online on April 6, 2025:

Jazmin Abasto-Ruggeri, grade 11
Cuthbertson High School, Waxhaw, NC
Erin Hong, grade 10
Sunny Hills High School, Fullerton, CA
Advika Kalla, grade 11
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM), Durham, NC

My design features ultra-soft fabric and a built-in nebulizer, projector, and speaker; these features are all controllable via a mobile app or directly on the plushie. Each feature can be completely tailored to what each child considers â€œhome,â€ from playing special music to encapsulating the child in a familiar scent.

This design is a sketch of a postcard exchange box. The user writes their kind note and inserts it into the machine. Then they receive a postcard that was written by a previous user. It is like an ATM machine, except you do not get rich with money, but instead, a postcard rich with love.

Design to rebuilt Chimney Rock, North Carolina. The design honors Catawba Indigenous architecture. It features circular structures with curved roofs for smoother wind flow and ventilation that increases downward force. Sites follow the mountain slopes and wind patterns; they use North Carolinaâ€™s red clay for thermal protection. The lofted foundation protects against floods.

The 2025 Honorable Mentions

Cooper Hewitt announced 12 Honorable Mentions on April 7, 2025. Congratulations!

Multicultural Pavilion is a mixed-use community space that can be used for art exhibits, social events, and performances. It includes an amphitheater-style stage, as well as various separated spaces connected by stairs and bridges. Its design blends Middle Eastern, Asian, European, and Latin American architectural elements.

. Everkind Playground, a fusion of â€œevery kindâ€ and â€œforever kindness,â€ is a free public playground open to all ages. Its centerpiece is a dual track with kinetic tiles to power lights. The wide paths have gentle slopes that are wheelchair and walker friendly. Seniors exercise on self-powering equipment, adults work on table swings, and children play on slides

My design repurposes pre-existing structures into pedestrian-friendly, multipurpose spaces. Using adaptive reuse and vernacular architecture, parks and pavilions would intertwine with buildings. Walkable pathways would connect markets, workspaces, businesses, religious buildings, and housing units.

Our website, The Peace Initiative, features three components: a hotline for students to share experiences of racial hate, fostering empathy among victims; mandatory lesson plans for teachers to offer unbiased insights into global conflicts; and a â€œSpot the Hateâ€ guide that helps identify signs of hate.

Wonderland Park is an inclusive and sensory-friendly playground for all; key features are the Sensory Space, especially beneficial to autistic children; the Starlight Symphonies for music exploration; and the Mystic Mountain with various climbing routes for all activity levels.

This interactive bus stop creates an environment for natural conversations and interactions by featuring a rotating games wall with universally understood quick games, as well as a community wall offering conversation starters, multilingual word display, and community highlights/events.

When this bag is disassembled, it can be inflated into an air mattress using the built-in pump attached to the bag. The bag is covered with a blanket, and there is a camping tent set included inside the bag.

A sensory playground in which kids can interact with plants like the balloon flower, which pops when squeezed, and chocolate cosmos, which smell like chocolate, while a sensory panel maze encourages problem-solving and audiovisual engagement.

different. A community garden for immigrant families offers a space to grow culturally significant, organic produce. Located in an accessible area, it fosters cross-cultural connections. The garden hosts farming classes for kids and “Feast Days,” where families cook and share their harvests.

Our design is a mobile laundromat that is strategically moved to areas with high concentrations of people experiencing homelessness so they can wash their clothes without charge.

StreetClean is a compact, portable, and sustainable restroom designed to assist urban homeless populations. The design provides a shower, toilet, and sink, all using a renewable water-conserving system concealed at the bottom of the structure and powered by solar energy. It also provides period products to support the menstrual health of women experiencing homelessness.

Maithili Chaudhari, grade 12
McNair Academic High School, Jersey City, NJ
Kevin Chen, grade 12 and Lance Lim, grade 12
Glen A. Wilson High School, Hacienda Heights, CA
Teacher: Justin Ro
Brendan Li, grade 11
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA
Angelina Lu, grade 11
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA
Moira Malhotra, grade 11, and Skyla Willems, grade 11
Academy of Allied Health and Sciences, Neptune, NJ
Teacher: Melissa Pitman
Mina Mori, grade 11
Hunter College High School, New York, NY
Mehr Poddar, grade 11
Redmond High School, Redmond, WA
Hyunseo Ryu, grade 10
Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, NJ
Teacher: Scott Lang
Sophie Takano, grade 12 and Kavita Amin, grade 12
Princeton Day School, Princeton, NJ
Anqi Xie, grade 12
La Jolla Country Day High School, La Jolla, CA
Teacher: Casey Walker
Charlotte Yeung, grade 10 and Marco Mas, grade 10
Granada Hills Charter High School, Granada Hills, CA
Teacher: Narae Kim
Mia Zhou, grade 11
Millburn High School, Millburn, NJ

2025 Special Thanks

The National High School Design Competition is made possible with generous support from Adobe, the Hirsch Family Foundation, the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Richard and Jean Coyne Family Foundation, and the Siegal Family Endowment.