ReDesign Graduate Showcase 2025
Purpose-led Design for a Changing World
29–31 October 2025 | 10:00am–6:00pm
20 Symonds Street, Auckland
Te Herenga Auaha | Faculty of Engineering and Design | Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland
You are warmly invited to the ReDesign Graduate Showcase 2025, a celebration of values, creativity, collaboration, and purpose-led innovation at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland.
Hosted by the Design Programme at Te Herenga Auaha, this annual event features the work of our graduating students: designers who are exploring how design can weave meaning between people, technology, and environment to create meaningful change.
This year’s showcase highlights three major collaborative briefs developed with external partners who share our commitment to design for impact.
- The Business Design stream, in partnership with Oceania Healthcare, explores how design can enhance sustainability, well-being and community in aged-care environments.
- The Placemaking stream, co-developed with Eke Panuku Development Auckland, reimagines the Te Art Tukutuku waterfront public space weaving social, cultural, economic, and environmental value.
- The Emerging Technologies stream, in collaboration with the Empathic Computing Lab, investigates how immersive and emerging technologies can deepen human connection and create new visitor experiences.
Across these projects, students have worked alongside professionals, communities, and researchers to co-design innovative solutions grounded in real-world challenges.
Over three days, visitors can explore the static exhibition, attend presentations, and engage in conversations with students and partners shaping a more sustainable, equitable future.
ReDesign 2025 embodies the kaupapa of purpose-led design design that connects, cares, and reimagines our shared world.
ReDesign 2025: Where Purpose Meets Possibility.
ReDesign Graduate Showcase 2025
Purpose-led Design for a Changing World
Te Herenga Auaha | Faculty of Engineering and Design
Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland
29–31 October 2025 | 10:00am–6:00pm | 20 Symonds Street, Auckland
Kaupapa: A Whānau of Purpose-led Designers
At the University of Auckland, design is not just about creating beautiful objects — it is about shaping meaningful futures. The Design Programme at Te Herenga Auaha, Faculty of Engineering and Design, fosters a whānau of practitioners and researchers committed to contributing to a new era of purpose-led design. This philosophy is at the heart of everything we do — design that is ethical, empathetic, and deeply engaged with the social, cultural, environmental, and political challenges of our time.
This October, we invite you to join us for the ReDesign Graduate Showcase 2025, a celebration of creativity, innovation, and collective intelligence. The showcase features the capstone projects of our graduating students, who have spent their final year tackling real-world issues in collaboration with communities, industry partners, and government agencies. Their work demonstrates how design — when guided by purpose — can reimagine the systems, spaces, and experiences that shape our shared future.
ReDesign: Where Real-World Challenges Meet Creative Action
The ReDesign Graduate Showcase is more than an exhibition; it is an invitation to rethink how design can act as a tool for social transformation. This year’s projects respond to some of the most pressing issues facing Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider world — from climate adaptation and circular economies to wellbeing, accessibility, and cultural regeneration.
Across three days of displays, live presentations, and interactive sessions, visitors will encounter projects that range from speculative future systems and gamified sustainability tools to local community-led initiatives and bioregional design strategies. Each project embodies the principle of design as inquiry — using making, mapping, and storytelling to question existing paradigms and propose alternative futures.
ReDesign is also a reflection of our students’ commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and kaupapa Māori values. Many of the projects explore design as a relational and regenerative practice, grounded in care for people and taiao (the natural world). Through this, our graduates demonstrate what it means to design not for communities, but with them — listening, co-creating, and learning in partnership.
Purpose-led Design in Action
At the University of Auckland, we believe that design is a connector — a bridge between disciplines, sectors, and ways of knowing. The Design Programme challenges traditionally siloed approaches by fostering transdisciplinary collaboration across engineering, architecture, computing, business, science, and the arts.
Our students work alongside external partners to address complex, systemic problems that cannot be solved in isolation. From developing new models for regenerative tourism with conservation organisations, to designing digital platforms for climate resilience or urban mobility, the projects highlight design’s potential to lead innovation in the real world.
This purpose-driven approach to design education ensures our graduates emerge not only as skilled practitioners but as strategic thinkers, creative leaders, and social innovators. They are equipped to work across scales and contexts — from community engagement to policy design, from product development to environmental restoration.
Collaboration and Co-creation
A cornerstone of our teaching philosophy is partnership. Throughout their studies, students engage in collaborative projects with a wide range of external partners — including local councils, non-profits, research institutes, and industry leaders. These partnerships provide invaluable opportunities for experiential learning while generating outcomes that have genuine social and environmental impact.
Our students have co-designed with iwi and local communities to restore ecosystems, partnered with industry experts to advance material innovation, and developed prototypes that explore how emerging technologies can foster empathy, learning, and participation. Each collaboration reflects our commitment to reciprocity — ensuring that design processes generate mutual value and respect diverse forms of knowledge.
A Dynamic Experience
Visitors to the ReDesign Graduate Showcase can expect an immersive experience. Alongside the static exhibition of final projects, the event will feature scheduled talks, performances, and interactive sessions led by students, staff, and partners. These events will bring the stories behind the work to life — offering insights into each project’s process, impact, and vision for the future.
Whether you are an educator, researcher, professional designer, policymaker, or community member, the showcase offers a space to connect, reflect, and be inspired. It is an opportunity to see how the next generation of designers is shaping the future of design — not just as a discipline, but as a way of thinking and acting in the world.
Design for a New Era
In a time of accelerating social and environmental change, the need for design that is both critical and compassionatehas never been greater. The ReDesign Graduate Showcase embodies the belief that design can, and must, respond to the urgent challenges of our century — climate change, social inequity, biodiversity loss, and cultural fragmentation — with creativity, courage, and care.
Our students’ work demonstrates that beauty, functionality, and purpose are not opposing forces, but interconnected dimensions of design. Through their projects, they reveal how design can be regenerative rather than extractive, collaborative rather than competitive, and grounded in whanaungatanga — the relationships that connect us to each other and to the living world.
By integrating cultural knowledge, technological innovation, and systems thinking, the ReDesign Showcase stands as a testament to the University of Auckland’s leadership in design for social good and sustainable futures.
Join Us
We warmly invite you to celebrate the creativity, dedication, and vision of our graduating students at the ReDesign Graduate Showcase 2025.
Find more information here.
Dates: Wednesday 29 – Friday 31 October 2025
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Venue: Faculty of Engineering and Design, 20 Symonds Street, Auckland
Come see how design is being redefined — from product to process, from object to ecosystem — and how our graduates are leading the way toward a more equitable, resilient, and regenerative world.
ReDesign 2025: Where Purpose Meets Possibility.
