The Design Village Students win International Biodesign Challenge 2024 for Mirage: Eco Solutions from Marble Remnants

Students from The Design Village (TDV) have achieved remarkable success at the Biodesign Challenge Summit 2024, securing a place as finalists and winning the Outstanding Digital Submission Prize with their innovative project, “Mirage: Eco Solutions from Marble Remnants.”

The summit, renowned for bringing together visionary young minds, featured a total of 50+ schools from 15 countries. The project by Divyansh Jain, Raghav Modi, Vedangi Rane, and Prakriti tackles the extensive marble slurry dumps in Kishangarh, Rajasthan. They developed a method to convert this slurry into eco-friendly tiles, potentially creating local jobs. These tiles can reduce temperatures by 6-8°C and using marble slurry in production could reclaim approximately 85 acres of land. Mudita Pasari, Academic Dean at The Design Village said, “We are elated and quite overwhelmed by this recognition and proud of our students for their dedication and innovative thinking. Their success at the Biodesign Challenge Summit underscores our commitment to fostering creativity and sustainable design practices.”

The aim of the summit was to develop ideas that bridge art, design, and biology to reimagine a more sustainable and equitable future and to explore the ethical implications of current and future biotech and where it contributes to world-building. Under the guidance of Anusha Dhawan, Vatsal Agrawal, Souvik M., Gaurav Wali, and Dr. Nandita Pasari, the TDV team’s project stood out for its creative approach to sustainability, addressing the pressing issue of marble waste by transforming it into eco-friendly solutions.

Biodesign is an emerging discipline at the intersection of biology, art, and design. Bio designers work with living systems to make new materials and products, respond to problems, and critique how biotechnology is used today and might be used in the future.