During Dutch Design Week 2025, the moment finally arrived: the festive opening of the Design Poort (Dutch for “Design Gate”) at Strijp-T – a striking design object that quite literally opens the gates to Eindhoven as the design capital of the Netherlands. The Design Poort was created by design duo Daphna Laurens, commissioned by Eindhoven Design District, our collaboration with the Municipality of Eindhoven, and Dutch Design Foundation.

Eindhoven profiles itself as the design capital of the Netherlands, but this is not sufficiently visible to everyone. With the project Eindhoven Design District, we are bringing the city’s design DNA to the surface. We make design visible and tangible. The focus of Eindhoven Design District lies on the social and societal value of design: how does design contribute to sustainable, smart, and pleasant living together?

The city lacked a warm welcome — an imaginative entrance that would make this visible and tangible in an accessible way for residents, newcomers, and tourists. That is exactly what the Eindhoven design studio Daphna Laurens has been working hard on in recent times. The brand-new Design Gate forms a symbolic and physical entrance to the city of design.

“We set out in search of the ‘common denominator’ of design in the city — a shared foundation that forms the basis of creative processes across disciplines. Two concepts kept recurring in our design process: bending and connecting. That’s why we designed a curved and interconnected play of lines that gives shape to these two ideas — the fundamental principles of successful creative processes.”