Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI), which offers the region’s first multidisciplinary Bachelor of Design, today announces its shortlisted finalists in the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s global Terra Carta Design Lab competition. The competition seeks student-led,high-impact solutions to the climate and biodiversity crisis. Through such challenges, DIDI aims to future-proof students with real-world experience to strengthen Dubai’s creative and knowledge economies with skilled talent and innovation.

The Terra Carta Design Lab was launched by His Majesty King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, and Sir Jony Ive in 2021 in partnership with the Royal College of Art in London. This year’s Design Lab took its search to a global stage, partnering with the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (UAE), the Royal College of Art (UK), the Rhode Island School of Design (USA),and the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad (India).

Ten finalists from each of these prestigious global design schools have been evaluated and shortlisted by experts from within each school, with the final review to be led by Sir Jony Ive and Sustainable Markets Initiative CEO Jennifer Jordan-Saifi this summer. The eight winners will be announced this autumn and will receive funding and mentorship to further develop their innovations and enable them to be scaled and taken to market.

The students’ works showcase a wide breadth of innovations and solutions to help address the climate and biodiversity crisis. They include themes across reducing carbon emissions, limiting the devastating effects of fast fashion, and restoring marine life through innovative technologies and solutions.

10 SHORTLISTED TERRA CARTA PROJECTS:

• Polyurethane foam is a synthetic material used in fashion and sporting shoes. While lauded for being low-impact, its manufacturing process is energy-intensive, and sustainable disposal is limited due to plastic components.DIDI students Shahd Ahmed Elkarmalawy, Mariam Najyb Karl Hase Al Maskari, and Omar Bin Al Khattab developed Threadloop, an alternative foam-like material made from upcycled fast-fashion waste to reduce fast-fashion waste and contribute to building a circular fashion economy.
• Fuze by Dalilah Mansour is a power-harnessing system that efficiently transforms energy generated while cycling into usable electricity.
• Arjun Prince and Aryan Thomas developed Sebastian,a modular aquaponics system integrated with artificial intelligence. Aquaponics is a sustainable fish farming method combining aquaculture (raising fish in controlled environments) with hydroponics (growing plants in soil-less culture) to create a nutrient-rich, recirculating system.
• Carbon Capture Textiles, by Rachael Leigh Barkhuizen and Samara Rajaratnam, proposes a fabric that, like trees, absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• Home to sometimes over 1 million marine species and a natural barrier to storms and erosion, coral reefs are threatened by pollution, overfishing, destructive fishing and coral mining. SHELL. WASTE by Dalal Jabel investigates biomaterial made from seashells and natural binders to sculpt and restore coral management to preserve aquatic ecosystems.
• Illumire by Suad Al Fardan substitutes micro-plastic-generating sequins and glitter in fashion with a first-of-its-kind biodegradable alternative made from waste fish scales.
• Designed for chronic respiratory disease patients, Sana Mohamed’s Airofi is a smart device that collects real-time data on air pollution and tracks personal PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) emissions.
• Aquarevby Aya Farhan Alatrash and Jeeda Mhd Faez Haj Weiss Sabbagh are biodegradable, zero-waste shampoo blobs to reduce HDPE plastic pollution from bottles.
• Hind Tawakul’s Cultivating Resistance presents a biodiverse ecosystem that integrates traditional farming techniques with innovative food production methods.
• Mohammad Baaz improposed a community and collaborative space—House of Earthan—to design alternative biomaterials and promote collaborative creativity in the fact of overconsumption.

“The future is creative,” said Mohammad Abdullah, President of DIDI. “The Terra Carta Design Lab is a testament to the fundamental role the creative sector will play in solving the world’s most pressing problems, combining the power of the arts, academia and science to conceive inclusive, empathetic, and viable sustainability solutions. DIDI is proud to represent Dubai and the region in such a global competition and to provide our students with a prestigious platform to catapult their careers and experience. The work they have developed represents the DNA of DIDI—conceiving solutions that are empathetic, add value and reshape the future, socially, digitally, and creatively.”

Jennifer Jordan-Saifi, CEO of the Sustainable Markets Initiative, said: “At the Sustainable Markets Initiative we are accelerating a sustainable future through the collision of ideas and co-creation between the private sector and the next generation of global leaders, including our Design Lab finalists. Their work exemplifies what is possible when we put design, engineering, innovation, technology, art and global experience at the heart of systems-level change.

“At the SMI we are finding ways to connect industry, financial and country systems with the many innovations that are emerging around the world so that, together, we can scale solutions globally.  As one people, sharing one planet and facing one common future, we have much to learn from this optimistic, multi-disciplinary and multi-generational approach that is embodied in the Terra Carta Design Lab.”

Sir Jony Ive, Chancellor of the Royal College of Art and Terra Carta Design Lab Global Judge, said: “I am thrilled that the Terra Carta Design lab has gathered momentum this year to include four international design schools.”

“The lab elevates the rigorous and imaginative ideas from all these students, and demonstrates the power and importance of multidisciplinary design and collaboration in meeting global challenges.”

The finalists and winners from the inaugural Design Lab launched in 2021 have since secured over £35m*in funding and have gone on to win further accolades, including the Earthshot Prize.

Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation’s innovative curriculum was crafted with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The New School’s Parsons School of Design. It aims to cultivate a future generation of designers to create and conceive solutions that add value and reshape the future socially, digitally, and creatively.

Students tackle a minimum of two disciplines across Product Design, Multimedia Design, Fashion Design, and Strategic Design Management, developing creative problem-solving skills to imagine a better future world responsibly, sustainably, and critically, as well as fostering adaptable and flexible skills for a rapidly changing design and digital job landscape.