Winner: Lighting design of the year 2025. Kazuhiro Yamanaka has designed Tsubomi, an imperfect, wrinkled, flat-packed lamp series.

By opening the vacuum-packed flat pack from its folded state and standing it up by hand, air can enter through the holes at the bottom, making Tsubomi a light that stands on its own without any structure other than paper.

The wrinkles that appear in the folded state give the paper a unique and beautiful expression, which becomes even more distinctive when exposed to light.

"The lamp is lightweight and can maintain [its shape] depending on how it opens, which disputes the notion that a perfect shape is always beautiful," said Kazuhiro Yamanaka.

Judges comments: "This design challenges if a perfect shape is always the most beautiful. This cute and somewhat playful and naive lamp has a sort of crumpled elegance that gives it its own personality. It's affordable and non-precious which is unusual in lighting design today."

This project has been shortlisted in the lighting design category of Dezeen Awards 2025.

Studio: Kazuhiro Yamanaka
Project: Tsubomi