TERRA CARTA DESIGN LAB
Client: Rhode Island School of Design in collaboration with Sustainable Market’s Initiative
Client Team: Sara Ossana, Claudia Morris
Service: Strategic Design, Creative Direction; Climate & Sustainability
Project website ︎︎︎
This global competition unites the creativity of the RISD community and the power of private sector supporters to support innovative, scalable solutions and highlight the urgent need to focus on collaboration between art, science, design and engineering.
The challenge
To translate the high-level principles of His Majesty King Charles III's Terra Carta (a guiding mandate for sustainability) into tangible, scalable, market-ready design solutions for the climate crisis. The primary barrier was the gap between academic design innovation and the private sector's ability to fund, scale, and implement these solutions. The goal was to build a rigorous strategic pipeline that unites the creativity of a world-class design school (RISD) with the capital and influence of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI).
Insights
Strategic analysis of the innovation landscape and the creative community yielded key insights:
︎︎︎Design as Translation
Designers and artists possess the unique ability to translate complex ecological and scientific data into human-centric, aesthetically compelling, and commercially viable products and systems. This is the missing link between climate science and market adoption.
︎︎︎The Need for Interdisciplinary Rigor
Pure creative vision is insufficient for scalable impact. Solutions require validation through multiple lenses: ecologist, social justice expert, business lead, and storyteller. A successful design-led climate solution must be pressure-tested against all four domains.
︎︎︎Global Benchmarking
To truly find "breakthrough solutions," the process could not be US-centric. Joining international partners (RCA, Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation, National Institute of Design in India) was essential to elevate global perspectives and benchmark RISD's work against an international standard.
Strategy & Execution
My role focused on developing the strategic framework and curriculum to bridge the gap between abstract design concepts and market scalability over the 12+ month timeline.
︎︎︎Curriculum & Mentorship Design
We designed and implemented a robust curriculum featuring core and flash workshops led by multi-disciplinary experts (ecologists, business leads, social justice experts). This action provided the innovators with the necessary strategic and commercial literacy to move beyond prototypes.
︎︎︎Strategic Criteria Framing
We worked with RISD leadership to frame the project criteria to strictly align with both the Terra Carta's mandate and RISD's commitment to social equity, ensuring solutions addressed not just the climate, but also the human and social dimensions of sustainability.
︎︎︎Pipeline Management
We defined a multi-stage outreach and engagement strategy to attract the highest-caliber student and alumni submissions, managing the entire lifecycle from initial ideation through final pitch presentation to the SMI committee.
Criteria to evaluate project submissions
Project timeline and milestones
Reflections from the outreach strategy and participation highlights
Collateral design