We bring De Zachte Stad (The Soft City) into focus. As Dutch Design Awards transitions into the future, we look back at how last year’s winners are reshaping the capacity of the Design field for impact.

The Soft City uses wool as a metaphor for the soft values of your city. It makes the circularity theme transparent and concrete for residents. Rotterdam Circulair x Christien Meindertsma demonstrates a stellar commissioning relation, ensuring that people now see Rotterdam’s sheep wool as a raw material suitable for a range of products and changing its perception from waste to a source of valuable applications.

It’s great that the municipality dares to tackle and propagate this through design. Applying Christien Meindertsma’s characteristic investigative approach to many steps means that, as a client, you must dare to manage uncertainty, which is certainly not self-evident for a municipality.

Check out the project page.