Leon van Klaveren

Hi, I’m Leon – a transition designer dedicated to finding pathways towards more ethical, humane and sustainable alternatives for the way we live and work. I design interventions, be they products, experiences, strategies, services or readings, based on extensive human-centered research and a deep contextual systemic understanding of the past and present. What sets me apart is my unique combination of technical expertise and empathy for social issues, coupled with my ability to think abstractly about complex systems while excelling in practical creation. I firmly believe that design is fundamentally an act of making, and through creating, testing, and iterating, we truly understand the impact of our interventions.

I believe that everything around us – from coffee cups to healthcare systems – actively shapes how we live and behave, rather than just serving as passive tools. These designed objects and systems carry hidden values and rules that profoundly influence our daily lives. By recognizing this power of everyday things, we can reimagine and redesign them to create more sustainable and humane futures. My work focuses particularly on sustainability and healthcare, where I combine strategic thinking with careful design craft to transform seemingly fixed systems into opportunities for positive change. 

I currently design wat is next at Livework and run Flip the City while maintaining my freelance design practice. I’ve had the privilege of working with many pioneering organisations, including the Red Cross, Royal Schiphol Group, Dutch Ministry of Immigration, Spierfonds, Lego, VGZ, TU Delft, Aalto University and many more.

Because weren’t we promised flying cars by now? 

Experience

Livework Studio is the founding company of service design as we know it today. Together with the team we work with leading national and international clients to design new services and experiences. 

Flip the City was founded in 2020 with the mission to make it easier for everyone to enhance biodiversity. We turn harmful and excessive duckweed into green tiles from which biodiverse plants grow. When I joined in September 2023, the company was in the research phase. By June 2024, we sold over 10.000 tiles, enhancing biodiversity in many Dutch cities and waterways. My responsibilities include scaling, product design and production development, and pitching. We won several awards and been featured on national TV, in newspapers and (inter)national exhibitions.

I have been working as a freelance designer since 2018. Projects include writing, service design, graphics, UI/UX design and development for clients such as: Gemeente Delft, SBG, Bench3D, Resilient Designers, MedTech Nederland, Gemeente Midden-Delfland and Gemeente Den Haag.

As part of the Delft Design Innovation and Impact Team, I have worked to strengthen the international leadership position of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. My goal was to establish new ways of working within the Faculty to secure additional funding and to establish high quality partnerships. My responsibilities included mapping the funding journey, designing and developing new interventions, internal tools and setting up new services. 

At the same time, I was co-responsible for coordinating the design in health direction of the faculty, including research, symposia and the Medisign education programme.

I have lectured and supervised a cohort of Collaborative and Industrial Design and IDBM students at the Aalto University‘s Dep. of Design. I taught students in the following courses: Strategic Design and Innovation, Opportunity Prototyping and Design and Innovation in Context. This included topics like; systems thinking, transition design, strategic design, future prototyping and future visions.

As a service designer at the Passenger Experience Team at Royal Schiphol Group, my primary goal was to improve the passenger journey at Schiphol Airport. My contributions included the creation of 11 tested impactful concepts within the reclaim areas, the family security filters and a new hygiene journey in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with three concepts all realised by August 2020. My responsibilities involved, customer journey, service blue prints, generation of concepts as well as pitching, budgeting, testing, prototyping the interventions and impact measuring (qual and quant).

During my internship at award-winning strategic design studio ‘The-Incredible-Machine‘ in Rotterdam, I worked as a service / product design intern for several clients, including; Alliander, Lego, Safran Group and ROC Mondriaan. My responsibilities stretched from customer journeys, developing new concepts to user research, prototyping and representing the company during Dutch Design Week 2018 where we received a Dutch Design Award for best product of the year.

During my internship at the product design agency Fluid Design in Munich, I had the chance to help design several physical products for Captron, Sennheiser and Bosch. Developing my user experience design and improving my 3D modelling skills.

Selected Clients & Collaborators

Contact

Activities

→ Design Research, Transition Design, Service Design, Roadmapping, Customer Journey, Service Blueprinting, User Experience Design, Web development, Prototyping, Systems Thinking.

Recognition & awards

→ Featured at the New Institute Museum 2025
For ‘Flip the City’ [NL]

→ Featured at the New Institute Museum 2024
For ‘The Resilient Designers Project’ [NL]

→ Featured at Milan Design Week 2024
For ‘Building Mental Resilience for Young Adults’ [IT]

→ Featured at Dutch Design Week 2023
For ‘Building Mental Resilience for Young Adults’ [NL]

→ Dutch Designers Yearbook Shortlist ’23-’24
For ‘Building Mental Resilience for Young Adults’ [NL]

→ Lecture at Professorial Dinner and IDE BSc commencement, 2024
For ‘Building Mental Resilience for Young Adults’ [NL]

→ New European Bauhaus Prize Finalist, 2023
For ‘Flip the City’ [EU]

→ KVK top 100 innovative companies of the year, 2023
For ‘Flip the City’ [NL]

→ Featured on Dutch national TV show Binnenstebuiten, 2023
For ‘Flip the City’ [NL]

→ Design Fest Gent, Dutch Design Week, Milan Design Week, 2022
For ‘Flip the City’ as part of Water School [BE, NL, IT]

→ iF Design Award 2020 Best Industry Product
For ‘Captron CANEO series10’ at Fluid Design GmBH [DE]

→ Featured at Dutch Design Week 2018
For ‘Fairbike’ at TheIncredibleMachine [NL]

→ Dutch Design Award best product in 2018
For ‘Transparante Laadpaal’ at TheIncredibleMachine [NL]

Education

→ MSc Strategic Product Design
Delft University of Technology [NL]
Cum Laude, GPA: 8.6/10

→ MSc Collaborative and Industrial Design
Aalto University [FI]
Exchange GPA: 9.3/10

→ BSc Industrial Design Engineering
Delft University of Technology [NL]
Cum Laude and with Honours GPA: 8.6/10