Royal College of Art community to take the stage at the World Design Congress 2025 in London

Taking place in London for the first time in 59 years, the Design Council, in collaboration with the World Design Organization, will bring together global design leaders at the Barbican Centre from the 9-10 September to tackle the urgent topic of 'Design for Planet' to shape a better future for all.

RCA practitioners participating at the World Design Congress include:

• Professor Lesley Lokko OBE, Royal College of Art examiner, is a World Design Congress 2025 Ambassador lending her voice to champion the Design for Planet mission and nominating a cohort of 'Design for Planet Trailblazers'.

• Product designer and Co-Founder of Shellworks Insiya Jafferjee (Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, 2019) has been nominated as a ‘Design for Planet Trailblazer’, an inspirational designer redesigning the industry and harnessing innovative design solutions to the climate crisis.

• Dr Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, RCA Tutor (Research) for the MA Fashion programme, will take part in the discussion ‘Nature as a Designer: When Nature is on the Team’ to explore how nature can guide truly regenerative solutions.

• Professor Sharon Baurley, Director of the Materials Science Research Centre and Professor of Design & Materials, will deliver a presentation on establishing a culture of sustainability in society, sharing research from The Regenerative Fashion Hub, a research project by the Textiles Circularity Centre. Sharon will also participate in the discussion ‘Future Forward: Designing for a Zero-Emission World’, considering how cutting-edge materials, AI, and behavioural insights are converging to create circular, scalable, and nature-positive solutions.

• Co-founder of The Design for Good Alliance Dr Nick de León (Executive Education and Knowledge Exchange Lead at the RCA School of Design), will participate in ‘Supply and Demand: Shaping the Market for Green Design Skills’, a conversation about how to future-proof the professions shaping our planet, both those that design, and those that commission it.

• Designer and founder of Heatherwick Studio Thomas Heatherwick (MA Furniture Design, 1994) will deliver the congress keynote ‘Global Greenprints: Designing Resilient Futures’, demonstrating how his approach to urban placemaking puts people at the heart of design.

• Design curator and writer Priya Khanchandani (MA V&A/RCA History of Design, 2013) will chair ‘Future Forward: Designing for a Zero-Emission World’, a debate about what it takes to design a truly zero-emission future.

• Solar designer Marjan van Aubel (MA Design Products, 2012), founder of Marjan van Aubel Studio with a vision to make solar power more accessible for everyone, will take part in the discussion ‘Powering Resilient Ecosystems: Where Energy, Biodiversity and Innovation Meet’ to highlight how we can power the planet without costing the Earth.

• Terra Carta Design Lab finalists Aura Murillo and Louise Lenborg Skajem (Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc, 2022), founders of Resting Reef, an InnovationRCA supported start-up that transforms ashes into living reefs as an innovative memorial service, will participate in the panel ‘Design in Green Demand with Innovate UK’ to discuss what helps, or hinders, businesses from embracing design as a strategic capability.

• Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez (MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering, 2014), Co-founder and Co-CEO of Notpla, a company that creates revolutionary biodegradable plastic-free packaging from seaweed,  finalist of the RCA inaugural Terra Carta competition (2021),  will discuss how sustainability can move from a boutique effort to a global force in the conversation ‘From Small to Large – Scaling Sustainable Solutions: What Entrepreneurs and Boardrooms Can Learn from Each Other’.

• Also participating in the conference will be two innovative research projects that leverage the power of community within design:
  • Ecological Citizens is based at the RCA in collaboration with Wrexham University and the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York. Their mission is to catalyse Ecological Citizenship in a sustainable digital society for positive climate action. They will be sharing research on ‘Permaculture and the end of extractivism’ in collaboration with the Permaculture Association and submitting a paper on ‘Appropriate Technologies for Regenerative Practices.’
  • INFUZE, a transport-focused research project led by the University of Leeds with the RCA’s Intelligent Mobility Design Centre (IMDC) and Lancaster University, investigates how local citizens in Leeds can inform a new approach to transport in their city. They will present a paper to consider how community-led design can help achieve the UK’s net-zero goals.

• The winners of the 2024/25 RCA Grand Challenge: Design Resilience, all of whom are graduating students from across the RCA School of Design, will attend as guests of the Congress as a recognition of their success in the competition.

• The RCA Battersea campus will be hosting the global Public Design Conference, on 11 September, as part of the World Design Congress Design Safari, bringing government designers together from around the world for a first-of-its-kind conference about the future of design in government. The theme this year is global public design patterns to explore how patterns are emerging across different governments, and how we can collaborate internationally to improve and share them. Nicolás Rebolledo, Senior Tutor in Service Design at the Royal College of Art, will be a keynote speaker at this event.