Grand Challenge 2023/24: Ocean & Cities Exhibition

This year’s Grand Challenge brings London closer to the ocean. 140 student teams from the School of Design examined London’s relationship to the sea, identifying design opportunities across the city’s 32 boroughs and the City of London. The goals were to address cities' impacts on the ocean and increase resilience to the ocean-related effects of climate change.

The ground-floor exhibition presents outstanding Grand Challenge projects selected for their use of ocean science, co-design, and place-based approaches. On the first floor, the exhibition Ocean Futures: Multi-Species Perspectives features work by students in the MDes Design Futures programme.

The exhibitions will be open to the public 21–23 and 25–26 March 2024. Closed 24 March.

About the Grand Challenge

The RCA Grand Challenge is the biggest single-institution postgraduate design project in the world. The Grand Challenge promotes interdisciplinary collaboration across School of Design programmes to address complex and urgent problems of societal relevance. This year, close to 700 students were involved from Design Products, Fashion, Innovation Design Engineering, Intelligent Mobility, Service Design and Textiles. The Grand Challenge 2023/24: Ocean & Cities is part of the RCA’s work as a UNESCO Ocean Decade Implementing Partner. This webpage showcases last year’s Grand Challenge about coastal communities.