Royaldesigners

Throughout the 2025 World Design Congress at the Barbican Centre in London, we heard from some of the world’s most creative thinkers. Among them were Royal Designers for Industry sharing their visions, including Norman Foster RDI, Thomas Heatherwick RDI, Tom Lloyd RDI and Brian Eno RDI speaking on the main stage.

In the darkened auditorium, over 700 delegates from across the world sat in rapt silence as speakers challenged us to think on longer timeframes, to consider the materials and processes we use and to reflect on how we design cities and systems that shape our lives. The Congress, shaped in part by event ambassador Es Devlin RDI, was ambitious, intense and brilliantly curated by the Design Council.

But the breakout Session, intriguingly named Design Entanglement, was something else entirely. Led by Johanna Gibbons RDI — landscape architect and Faculty Master Elect — it took place in the Barbican Conservatory and offered a welcome shift from the focus and formality of the main stage. With warm sunlight filtering through layers of canopy planting — established by a unique combination of brutalist architecture and transpiring plantlife — we explored what it means to design not just for the planet, but with it.

17 RDIs and 32 delegates came together for a moment of shared inquiry. The Session began with a series of provocations before breaking into small, roaming groups in conversation among the foliage. Each group, hosted by a Royal Designer, asked: how are we entangled? With each other? With materials? With systems? With nature?

As the designated Scribe, I wandered between groups, listening in. Conversations drifted from lichen to light frequencies, compost to cast iron, drawing unexpected lines between disciplines. These exchanges drew on a wide spectrum of practices — from furniture, illustration and landscape architecture, to product design, ecological systems and graphic communication — reflecting the wide-ranging expertise of the RDI Faculty present. Delegates regrouped and re-formed throughout, ensuring everyone encountered multiple perspectives and voices.

Royal Designers in attendance:

• - Kim Avella RDI – Textiles design
  
• - Kate Blee RDI – Textiles design
  
• - Ian Cartlidge – Graphic design
  
• - Dinah Casson RDI – Interior design
  
• - Peter Clegg RDI – Architecture
  
• - Sebastian Cox RDI – Regenerative design
  
• - Jo da Silva RDI – Sustainable design
  
• - Marion Deuchars RDI – Illustration
  
• - Mike Dempsey RDI – Graphic design
  
• - Malcolm Garrett RDI – New media
  
• - Johanna Gibbons RDI – Landscape design
  
• - Andrew Grant RDI – Landscape design
  
• - Tom Lloyd RDI – Product design
  
• - Mark Major RDI – Light design
  
• - Morag Myerscough – Communication design
  
• - Charlie Paton RDI – Engineering design
  
• - Mike Wells RDI – Ecological design
  

At the close, we gathered around a long table draped in cloth by Kate Blee RDI for a quiet act of collective reflection: a collaborative game of consequences. Each participant added a thought, folded the paper and passed it on. What emerged was a fragmented but poetic collective voice, which was thoughtful, searching and unresolved.

The responses touched on themes of hope, connection and care; questioned the ethics of design and the pace of growth; explored our relationship with nature, stewardship and learning; and called for more imagination, joy and reciprocity in how we design and live.

Together these fragments revealed a community entangled by responsibilities. What emerged from the session was not a single answer, but a shared recognition that design should be a practice engaged in nature. That we are nature. That embracing this truth will reshape design practice for the better.

This Session demonstrated the Faculty at its best — exercising its power to convene, or entangle — by creating a shared space for reflection and long-term thinking. And, perhaps, planting the seeds of lifelong connection.

Rupert Evans-Harding is the director of REH Consulting, a London-based strategy and communications practice that helps clients decide what to do and say next. Rupert attended the World Design Congress as Scribe.