Deans' Design Challenge to Address Growing Population

With the world’s population expected to grow exponentially in coming years, the Harvard Innovation Lab is turning to students for solutions to the sociopolitical and environmental problems that population expansion may pose.

The Deans’ Design Challenge: Urban Life 2030, announced last Friday in collaboration with the I-Lab, will award the top eight student proposals with prize money, which will be used to fund the projects beyond their research and development stage. The Challenge will officially kick off on Dec. 3 at the I-Lab in Allston.

“By leveraging the resources available through the Harvard I-Lab—from educational programs to mentors—the Challenge will give students with a focus on design thinking the potential to make a global impact,” Graduate School of Design Dean Mohsen Mostafavi and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Cherry A. Murray, the co-chairs of the Challenge, wrote in a press release.

The Deans’ Design Challenge is the fourth contest of its kind to be sponsored by the I-Lab in recent years. It joins the Deans’ Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge, the Deans’ Health and Life Sciences Challenge, and the President’s Challenge, which kicked off the series in 2012.

“I view these Challenges as a mechanism for collaboration and the birthplace of ideas—some of which may get recognized, some of which will go on regardless of the Challenge,” I-Lab managing director Gordon S. Jones said. “I think all of them should have the potential to be implemented in real world environments...as opposed to [being] a purely academic exercise.”

Like its predecessors, the Deans’ Design Challenge crosses academic departments, outlining four different disciplinary areas of focus for proposals.

The “Responsive Cities” focus asks how cities can improve functionality, “Urban Metabolisms” calls for ideas regarding energy efficiency and sustainability, and “The Future of Consumption” revolves around technological innovations in material consumption. The final focus, “Aging in Place,” asks teams to address the adverse effects posed by an older population.

“[The Challenge] would be particularly wonderful for those teams that involve people from different departments and disciplines,” Design School professor Ann Forsyth said. “I think that’s a real value of this kind of project.”

Gordon agreed, adding that Challenge winners “almost always include some unique approach or insight and include some consideration for how they can be economically sustainable.”

Participating Harvard Students will submit their proposals in February, before a committee of experts from the University and outside community judges them. Finalists will give presentations at an event in May, with a grand prize winner announced after. The sizes of the awards have not yet been announced.