Design Research in the Netherlands 2005 is the third instalment of a symposium that intends to provide a forum for researchers across the academic and designing disciplines. The five-year interval (1995, 2000, and 2005) allows participants to take a step back from daily considerations and to reflect on their basic methodological assumptions, research programmes, and outcomes. It also provides us with the opportunity to witness the dynamics in organisations that are usually less apparent in annual or bi-annual meetings. Over the three proceedings of the symposium, we can see groups merge, split up, change names, being created, or disappear. The same applies to research programmes. Apart from the general academic dynamics (baffling as these sometimes may appear), do these changes reflect some more fundamental movements within the field of design research?