Winners of the RCA Grand Challenge 2024/25: Design Resilience revealed as exhibition opens

Students from across the RCA School of Design have explored all 32 London boroughs to present distinctly resilient and robust design solutions to the most pressing socio-economic and ecological challenges facing local communities and stakeholders.

The Royal College of Art Grand Challenge is the biggest single-institution postgraduate design project in the world. The initiative promotes interdisciplinary collaboration across the School of Design’s programmes to address pressing issues affecting Greater London’s boroughs. This year over 500 students are taking part from Master’s programmes as diverse as Design Products, Fashion, Innovation Design Engineering, Intelligent Mobility, Service Design and Textiles.

From today until Tuesday 1 April 2025 (10am – 5pm each day, closed Sunday 30 March), the shortlisted projects will be on display to the public in the Grand Challenge exhibition at the RCA Battersea campus. These creative design proposals explore solutions around climate change, health, pollution, justice, inclusion and more, that are not only robust to current risks but also have the ability to adapt, change and recover.

The RCA Grand Challenge 2024/25 winners were chosen by a judging panel who considered strength of innovation, feasibility and impact when selecting the winning teams. This year, the panel consisted of Councillor Johnny Thalassites, Lead Member for Finance, Customer Services & Net Zero at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, alongside Sophie Rochester, Founder and CEO of Yodomo, Sarah Gaventa, Creative Director of Ealing Council, and Diego Munoz, current student and previous member of the 2023/24 Grand Challenge shortlisted team Rhythm of the River.

The winning projects are:

FIRST PLACE: Cut From The Same Cloth

Designed by Bana Quronfuleh (MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering), Misha Nikkhah (MA Textiles), Zidong Xue (MA Service Design), Zi Cai (MA Design Products), Qi Wang (MA Fashion)

The project highlights the young artist community of Haringey through ethnographic research, interviews and an interactive tapestry that amplify local voices, celebrate creativity and preserve the borough’s artistic legacy

“It has the potential to go straight into the community. It’s an exciting project that can work across infinite activities within the community, and empower others within the community to be creative.” - Sophie Rochester, Founder and CEO of Yodomo

“It is pretty much ready to go. You can see it in a local authority setting and in the market and it’s a really exciting idea that I hope is pursued. It could be used everywhere.” - Councillor Johnny Thalassites, Lead Member for Finance, Customer Services & Net Zero at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

SECOND PLACE: Whitgift Blooms: Revitalising Underutilised Spaces

Designed by Yang-Chuan Wang (MA Service Design), Junyu Qu (MA Textiles), Vincent Pearce (MA Design Products), Keshav Doyal (MA Service Design) Muzhen Wu (MA Fashion)

The project aims to collaborate with private investors to revitalise Croydon’s town centre by transforming abandoned buildings into green spaces.

THIRD PLACE: HMP Wandsworth: Reimagined

Designed by Cassorde Zafari (MA Intelligent Mobility), Natalie Dubrovska (MA Design Products), Yinwen Zhang (MA Design Products), Sirui Li (MA Service Design), Wenxi Xu (MA Fashion)

The project seeks to tackle some of the challenges facing one of the UK’s oldest and largest prisons located in the London borough of Wandsworth through humanistic, spatially innovative design solutions that improve the poor conditions found within prison cells, such as a lack of privacy and spatial autonomy.

BEST RESEARCH PRACTICE: Moss Air Filtration and Education Ecosystem

Designed by David Wen Jun Soh (MA Service Design), Hanna Dorota Caputa (MA Design Products), Yuanjun Wang (MA Fashion), Ella Rose Morgan (MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering)

This project tackles the air pollution found in the London borough neighbouring Heathrow airport of Hounslow. They present The Moss Air Filtration system, a system 3.8 times more effective than trees at removing the pollutants (UFP’s) that are released into the environment, from aircraft engines.

BEST COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: No Poo Left Behind. Respect the Land, Bag in Hand

Designed by Manna Rao (MA Design Products), Millie Jowett (MA Fashion), Sara Gelfgren (MA Service Design), Yvonne Zhang (MA Design Products), Zijie Yang (MA Intelligent Mobility)

The team is seeking to tackle the problem of dog waste in the historic Hainault forest of Redbridge through a design intervention highlighting the issue to raise awareness, dissolve tensions between dog walkers and those invested in protecting the natural environment and encourage the community to care for the woodland.

The RCA Grand Challenge 2024/25 is led by a team from across the School of Design: Dr Ali Mohammed (Senior Tutor, Research, MA Design Products), Dr Savithri Bartlett (Senior Tutor, Research, MA Fashion), Dr Richard Atkinson (Senior Tutor, MA Service Design), Tristan Webber (Senior Tutor, MA Fashion) and Vivienne Wen Du (Administrator).