The Terra Carta Design Lab invites students to design high-impact solutions to the climate crisis

Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation has joined the challenge, alongside the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad (India), Rhode Island School of Design (USA) and the Royal College of Art (UK).

The Global Judging Panel will be spearheaded by Sir Jony Ive 

Two winners from each school will be announced in Autumn 2024 and will receive funding and mentorship. 
 
Dubai, UAE: Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI), the region’s first multidisciplinary Bachelor of Design, has joined the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Terra Carta Design Lab, to discover student-led, high-impact solutions to the climate crisis.
 
His Majesty King Charles III, in his former role as the Prince of Wales, and Sir Jony Ive launched the Terra Carta Design Lab in 2021, in partnership with the Royal College of Art.  
 
This year’s Design Lab has expanded its search to partner with four design schools from across the world. Joining the competition alongside DIDI will be the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad (India), Rhode Island School of Design (USA) and the Royal College of Art (UK).
 
The Sustainable Markets Initiative is inviting students and recent alumni (graduated in the last five years) from the four prestigious schools to address the devastating damage being done to our planet and create breakthrough solutions for Nature, People and Planet, inspired by its guiding mandate - the Terra Carta.
 
With a curriculum crafted with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The New School's Parsons School of Design, DIDI empowers students 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 cultivating adaptable and flexible skills for a rapidly changing design and digital job landscape. 
 
Mohammad Abdullah, President of DIDI, said, “Education is evolving, growing beyond classrooms and lecture halls. At DIDI, we provide our students with a wealth of hands-on and expert-led learning that enriches their experience with real-world insights and skillsets. The Terra Carta Design Lab is a prestigious opportunity for our students to test and showcase their innovative design thinking internationally and demonstrate how DIDI is nurturing well-rounded creators, innovators and entrepreneurs for sustainable future development and economic growth.”  
Hani Asfour, Vice President of Innovation and Institutional Partnerships at DIDI, said, “Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders who will have to actively address the devastating impacts of climate change.  
 
“Involving youth in the solution is key to ensuring an integrated and sustainable strategy to protect the planet. Our multidisciplinary design curriculum aims to nurture well-rounded doers: designers, innovators and entrepreneurs who approach environmental challenges with creativity and care. We are honoured to participate in a prestigious initiative like the Terra Carta Design Lab, which will challenge students to push their boundaries for creative problem-solving and demonstrate their ingenuity on a global platform.”
 
DIDI’s participation in the Terra Carta Design Lab follows a rich lineup of sustainable design initiatives in which the university has taken part, in line with the UAE’s Year of Sustainability. Earlier this year, DIDI made a significant impact at Sandooq Al Watan's Creativity and Innovation Open Day, a special exhibition showcasing students' achievements across the UAE in sustainable innovation and creativity. Projects included a soil-revitalizing robot, recycled seashells as an ecological physical design solution, and a coffee packaging waste program. 
 
In May, DIDI also held the 7th edition of the Project Design Space competition, where students responded to sustainable design challenges posed by leading brands such as the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MoCCAE), DP World, and Samsung. 
 
The Terra Carta Design Lab will harness the expertise of each school, with the power of the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s network of private sector supporters to bring to light innovative, scalable solutions and continue to highlight the urgent need to focus on the creative collaboration between art, science, design, and engineering.
 
Jennifer Jordan-Saifi, CEO, Sustainable Markets Initiative said: “Through the Sustainable Markets Initiative and the Terra Carta Design Lab, we aim to inspire accelerated action on the world’s sustainability targets while illustrating a vision of what is possible. Cross-disciplinary engagement, creativity, and design provide a unique opportunity to co-create and discover new paths that can drive the sustainable transition we so urgently need. 
 
"Scaling the Terra Carta Design Lab globally allows us to expand our search to uncover ground-breaking sustainability solutions, created by the next generation of leaders.  We are delighted to be partnering with such prestigious design schools who each place sustainability at the core of their curriculum.” 
 
To celebrate the power of thinking differently and bringing together diverse, global minds, two projects from each school will be awarded funding and the opportunity to be mentored by Sir Jony Ive and the Sustainable Market Initiative’s vast network to help scale their ideas and bring them to market. 
 
Sir Jony Ive, Chancellor of the Royal College of Art said: “Multidisciplinary collaboration has never been more important. It is incredibly rewarding to see an even broader group of students use deep creative collaboration to develop thoughtful ways of tackling the multifaceted challenges of the climate crisis.
 
“I'm incredibly proud to be part of the Terra Carta Design Lab and the momentum it has built over the past two years. The mission of addressing the climate crisis is more relevant and urgent than ever, and I'm very excited to see the ideas these international design students will have developed by next Autumn.”
 
All submissions will be judged by a panel of experts at each school, before they each present a top ten shortlist to the Global Judging Panel for final judging, spearheaded by Sir Jony Ive. The winning eight designs will be announced in Autumn 2024. 
 
Showing the real-world impact of the Terra Carta Design Lab, the inaugural four winning designs have raised £18m in funding, hired new employees and completed a range of pilot programmes to further develop their climate solutions. 
 
About the Sustainable Markets Initiative 
In his former role as The Prince of Wales, His Majesty King Charles III launched the Sustainable Markets Initiative at Davos in January 2020. The Sustainable Markets Initiative is a network of global CEOs across industries working together to build prosperous and sustainable economies that generate long-term value through the balanced integration of natural, social, human, and financial capital. These global CEOs see themselves as the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ helping to lead their industries onto a more ambitious, accelerated, and sustainable trajectory. 
 
Read more: www.sustainable-markets.org   
 
About the Terra Carta   
In his former role as The Prince of Wales, His Majesty King Charles III, launched the Terra Carta at the One Planet Summit in January 2021.  The Terra Carta serves as the mandate for the Sustainable Markets Initiative and provides a practical roadmap for acceleration towards an ambitious and sustainable future; one that will harness the power of Nature combined with the transformative power, innovation, and resources of the private sector. Currently the Sustainable Markets Initiative has more than 500 CEO level supporters of the Terra Carta in addition to the 56 members of the Commonwealth, C40 Cities and the United Kingdom’s 13 Core Cities. The Terra Carta has served as the inspiration for the Terra Carta Design Lab. The Terra Carta is a roadmap for public, private, and philanthropic collaboration and open to all countries, cities, companies, organisations, and schools who wish to support it. 
 
Read more: www.sustainable-markets.org/terra-carta. 
 
About Jony Ive & LoveFrom  
Sir Jony Ive KBE is a designer.  He joined Apple in 1992. As chief design officer, Jony was responsible for all hardware, user interface and packaging design, as well as the major architectural projects Apple Park and Apple retail stores. He led the design team for more than two decades, creating the iMac, PowerBook, MacBook, iBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad, AppleWatch, AirPods and HomePod. Co-founder Steve Jobs referred to Jony as his creative partner. 
 
He holds more than 14,000 patents worldwide, uniquely spanning both software and hardware design. Jony currently serves as chancellor of the Royal College of Art, is frequently voted one of Britain’s most culturally influential figures. 
 
In 2019, Jony gathered the creative collective LoveFrom, which includes designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, writers, engineers and artists. The combined experience, achievement and recognition of these creatives is without precedent.   
 
The collective has been working quietly together since 2019, announcing multi-year collaborations with Airbnb and Ferrari. It has studios in San Francisco and London. lovefrom.com

About Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation 
Established in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The New School’s Parsons School of Design, Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI) is a non-profit university, located at Dubai Design District (d3) and accredited by the UAE Ministry of Education. 

With its first intake in 2018, DIDI focuses on nurturing the Middle East’s next generation of designers. Its curriculum is designed to empower students to map out their own four-year educational journey, culminating in the region’s first integrated Bachelor of Design degree with a choice of concentrations in the areas of Product Design, Multimedia Design, Fashion Design and Strategic Design Management.

LEARN MORE
www.didi.ac.ae
Call +971 4 568 3911
@DIDIDXB  

About National Institute of Design Ahmedabad
Established in 1961, National Institute of Design (NID) Ahmedabad is internationally acclaimed as one of the finest educational and research institutions for Industrial, Communication, Textile and IT Integrated (Experiential) Design. It is a statutory institute under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. It has been recognised as an 'Institution of National Importance' by the Act of Parliament, by virtue of the National Institute of Design Act. It is also recognised by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India as a Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
 
The mandate for NID is to offer world-class design education and to promote design awareness and application towards raising the quality of life by and through Education to create design professionals of excellence to help meet India's diverse design needs.
Education is imparted through studios and labs, where constant hands-on learning and experimentation happens in an interactive teaching-learning environment. The institute always prepares its students for a future in flux with uncertainty and ambiguity as its key characteristics. NID Ahmedabad is globally renowned for achieving benchmarks in terms of creativity-centric educational pedagogy, design thinking and design-infused leadership in various sectors of Indian society.
 
About Rhode Island School of Design
 
RISD (pronounced “RIZ-dee”) is a creative community founded in 1877 in Providence, Rhode Island. Today, we enroll 2,567 students hailing from 60 countries. Led by a committed faculty, they are engaged in 44 full-time bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and supported by a worldwide network of over 31,000 alumni who demonstrate the vital role artists and designers play in today’s society.
 
Beyond facts and figures, what is the spirit of this community? Through a cross-disciplinary curriculum of studio-based learning and rigorous study in the liberal arts, RISD students are encouraged to develop their own personal creative processes, but they are united by one guiding principle: in order to create, one must question. In cultivating expansive and elastic thinking, RISD seeks to activate a critical exchange that empowers artists, designers and scholars to generate and challenge the ideas that shape our world. RISD’s mission, at both the college and museum, is not only to educate students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, but to transmit that knowledge and make global contributions. Visit risd.edu to learn more. 
 
About Royal College of Art 
 
Founded in 1837, the Royal College of Art is the world's leading university of art and design. Specialising in teaching and research, the RCA offers degrees of MA, MPhil, MFA, MDes, MArch, MEd, MRes, Graduate Diploma and PhD across the disciplines of architecture, arts & humanities, design and communication.

A small, specialist and research-intensive postgraduate university based in the heart of London, the RCA provides around 2,800 students with unrivalled opportunities to deliver art and design projects that transform the world.

The RCA's approach is founded on the premise that art, design, creative thinking, science, engineering and technology must all collaborate to solve today's global challenges.

The RCA is home to more than 850 of the world’s leading academic and professional staff who teach and develop students in 34 academic programmes. RCA students are exposed to new knowledge in a way that encourages them to experiment.

The RCA runs joint courses with Imperial College London and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

InnovationRCA, the university's centre for enterprise, entrepreneurship, incubation and business support, has helped over 81 RCA business ideas become a reality that has led to the creation of over 800 UK jobs.

Alumni include such major figures as Dame Barbara Hepworth, Bridget Riley, Henry Moore OM, David Hockney OM, Sir Peter Blake, Sir Ridley Scott, Dame Zandra Rhodes, Sir Frank Bowling, Sir James Dyson OM, Tracey Emin RA CBE, Chris Ofili CBE, Sir Anthony Finkelstein, Francesca Amfitheatrof, Erdem Moralıoğlu MBE, Bianca Saunders and Thomas Heatherwick CBE RDI.

The RCA was named the world's leading university of art and design in the QS World Rankings 2023 for the ninth consecutive year (QS World Subject Rankings 2015-2023).

www.rca.ac.uk