This piece was authored by Marianne Mensah, Maurille Lariviere, Samantha Bufnoir, Penelope Diaz, Vanille Royer Herault, Emil Teitzner-Harris of WDO Educational Member Besign School.
The ocean regulates the Earth’s climate and holds 97 percent of the planet’s water, making it fundamental to life as we know it. Its health is inseparable from our own, and yet it remains under increasing threat.
How, then, can design play a meaningful role in engaging people to protect the ocean?
This was the guiding question for WDO Educational Member Besign’s Objective Ocean project, hosted in preparation for the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice (France). Over two years, the initiative mobilized 44 design students from across 30 countries to develop innovative ways to safeguard our oceans and the communities that rely on them for their livelihoods.
Divided into teams, participating students centred their ideation and research around United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water. The project brief was to expand the frontiers of regenerative design to the ocean, which encouraged teams to adopt a circular approach inspired by biomimicry to support the restoration and revitalization of marine ecosystems.
Design represents a powerful tool to reshape how we understand the ocean – from unknown immensities that absorb the waste of the world, to a source of life that nurtures and connects communities.
Students designed new scenarios for clean maritime mobility and organic marine farming. They conceived reusable food packaging to reduce plastic waste in the ocean and created digital tools to spot plastic in inhabited places. They developed new educational tools to sensitize children to the regeneration of coral reefs. They imagined sustainable infrastructures to protect communities from sea level rise and coastal erosion.
Awakened to the remarkable richness of marine biodiversity, students shared that designing solutions to protect the ocean has been a journey of curiosity, research and innovation. They learned from science that marine and terrestrial areas are closely interconnected. They discovered the Seaweed Revolution and the potential of seaweed for innovative food products, healthcare and sustainable materials, as highlighted by the UN Global Seaweed Coalition.
Besign’s Objective Ocean project brought together students from maritime and landlocked countries, with diverse backgrounds, united by the same purpose: there is only one ocean and it offers a new horizon of possibilities for designers.
