Product Design student Babet wins Audience Award at Cor Unum Design Contest

With her design Resonans, Product Design student Babet Klein Goldewijk has won the Audience Award at the Cor Unum Design Contest. Visitors selected her design as their favourite from 15 nominated entries. The works were on display from 9 to 28 May in the showroom of ceramic studio Cor Unum in ’s-Hertogenbosch. During the jury day, the finalists presented their work to both a professional jury and the public.

Colour as a starting point

The Cor Unum Design Contest is an annual design competition for design students and recent graduates. Through the competition, Cor Unum aims to provide a platform for emerging talent and promote the craft of ceramics.

For the 2025–2026 edition, the theme Color it! took centre stage. Participants were challenged to treat colour not as an addition, but as the starting point of their design. Working from existing forms in the Cor Unum collection, they were invited to question, adapt or completely reinterpret them.

From all submissions, the jury selected fifteen designs for the exhibition.

Babet’s research

Babet is a second-year student in the BA Product Design programme at ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Arnhem. For Resonans, Babet explored the contradictory meanings that colours can evoke. 'When I started designing for the Cor Unum Design Contest, I became fascinated by the idea that every colour simultaneously carries opposing associations,' she explains.

She translated this research into a set of two vases in which colour manifests itself in two distinct ways: powerful and soft. 'For Resonans, I designed a set of two vases in which colour reveals itself from two sides: sharp and powerful, but also rounded and soft. From this duality, I created a dynamic form in which colour and shape support one another and exist in balance.'

Audience favourite

During the presentation, Babet had the opportunity to exhibit her work alongside that of fourteen other finalists. In addition to the professional jury prizes, the Audience Award was determined by votes cast by visitors to the exhibition. The award highlights the strength of Babet’s design, in which form and colour come together in a subtle exploration of contrasts.