Ithra hosts Tanween design festival themed 'Design the Unspoken'.

1 hour ago7 min read1 comments

The Ithra cultural center is once again positioning itself as the vibrant, beating heart of the Middle East's creative awakening with the announcement of its eighth Tanween design festival, themed 'Design the Unspoken' for 2025. This isn't just another design event; it's a profound exploration into the very fabric of human connection, using empathy as its primary design tool, a concept that resonates deeply in a world increasingly mediated by screens and algorithms.Imagine a design process not starting with a sketch or a 3D model, but with a deep, almost therapeutic listening session—this is the frontier Tanween is charting. By focusing on the unspoken, the festival challenges creators to move beyond aesthetics and functionality to tap into the silent languages of emotion, culture, and shared experience, crafting objects, spaces, and systems that speak directly to the soul.This aligns perfectly with Saudi Arabia's broader, ambitious Vision 2030, a national blueprint that is itself a masterclass in design thinking, reshaping the kingdom's economic and cultural landscape. The choice of empathy as a central theme feels like a deliberate counter-movement to the cold, impersonal efficiency that sometimes characterizes modern design, inviting a return to human-centric principles.We can expect to see installations that respond to biometric data, furniture that adapts to unvoiced emotional states, and community projects built through collaborative, empathetic engagement, all serving as a powerful testament to the kingdom's evolving identity. This is about more than just placing Saudi Arabia on the global design map; it's about establishing it as a laboratory for the future of humanistic innovation, where the lines between designer, user, and community blur into a cohesive, empathetic whole.The 'unspoken' represents the vast, untapped potential in the gaps between words, the cultural nuances often lost in translation, and the universal human needs that transcend language, making this festival a critical platform for dialogue in a fragmented world. For creatives everywhere, from UX designers wrestling with user empathy to architects considering the psychological impact of space, Tanween 2025 promises to be a masterclass in designing not just for the eye, but for the heart, setting a new, profoundly necessary benchmark for what design can and should achieve in the 21st century.

#featured

#Tanween

#design festival

#Ithra

#Saudi Arabia

#creativity

#empathy

#cultural event

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