Tanween by Ithra: "Design the Unspoken" Comes to Dhahran
Tanween returns to Ithra Nov 17–22 with theme “Design the Unspoken.” To all creatives: register for the Tanween Challenges by Oct 26, 2025.
Exhibitions
In Dhahran this November, Tanween returns to Ithra with a challenge that feels both intimate and urgent. The eighth edition asks designers to read between the lines, to listen for the quiet needs that rarely reach a brief, and to build for the lives that get overlooked. The theme is “Design the Unspoken” and it turns Ithra’s campus into a studio for empathy-led experimentation from November 17 to 22, 2025.
To all creatives, designers, makers, and problem solvers: the deadline to register for the Tanween Challenges is October 26, 2025. If you want to prototype in public, test ideas with real users, and present during Tanween week, this is your window!
What the Theme “Design The Unspoken” Means
Most design today serves the top 10% of people, those who can buy premium products and services. The other 90% are often left out. This year, Tanween Challenges asks creators to change that focus. Design for the 90%. Design for people who live with low income, limited access to basic services, hard or extreme working conditions, and little voice in the design process. This includes informal workers, underserved communities, and anyone affected by mainstream design choices. The goal is simple: useful, affordable, and respectful design for everyday life.
Inside The Tanween Challenges
The Tanween Challenges are a six-day design sprints that invite applicants from around the world to prototype, iterate, and present in real time during the event week. Registration closes October 26, challenges begin November 17, and they wrap on November 22. It is design-as-action, set to the tempo of a festival.
Each track speaks to a concrete need set within the Kingdom’s wider transformation:
- Global Impact Challenge: Elevating The Learning Journey
Reimagining rural learning where resources and infrastructure are limited. - Product Design Challenge: Farmer Gadget
A multifunctional tool to support farmers working in extreme climates. - Urban Spaces Challenge: Communal Pavilion
Inclusive micro-environments that encourage human connection. - Visual Communication Challenge: Awareness Campaign For Diverse Communities
Accessible, multilingual materials that cross cultural and linguistic barriers.
Every track channels the same principle: design for the 90 percent, the majority often underserved by conventional markets. What sets this format apart is its publicness. Temporary structures and test installations will animate Ithra’s Plaza and gardens, turning the campus into a living lab where prototypes meet passersby. The city becomes a collaborator, not just a backdrop.
A Week That Feels Like A Design City
Tanween is a choreography of formats that speak to different stages of making, from sketch to policy, from studio to street.
1) Talks and the Tanween Majlis
Expect architects, product designers, and cultural thinkers to interrogate where design can meaningfully intervene. The Majlis format favors dialogue over lectures, leaning into debate and exchange.
2) Workshops and “A Day with an Expert”
Skill-building remains a core promise of Tanween. Curated workshops and intimate expert sessions help young designers pressure-test ideas and gain practical techniques they can deploy immediately.
3) Exhibitions and the Grad Show
A calibrated balance of international perspectives and local emergent voices, where visitors can map global currents onto Saudi context and graduates claim space with fresh proposals.
4) Design Market
A lively encounter with regional and global brands, framing design as both culture and commerce without flattening its nuance.
Partnerships and a Global Conversation
Coverage across regional media underscores Tanween’s widening conversation, with editorial spotlights on the program’s social lens and the open call’s global reach. The effect is a two-way street: designers arriving to learn from Saudi’s rapid transformation, and Saudi creatives exporting a grounded, community-first approach.
The Ithra Effect
Part of Tanween’s magic is architectural. Ithra, with its sinuous forms and porous public zones, is built for movement and encounter. The campus absorbs activity. Exhibitions in the Great Hall, critique circles on the Plaza steps, a sprint team huddled under a palm canopy, a child tugging their parent toward a glowing prototype. The setting invites a kind of civic tenderness, a willingness to pause and consider what a better shared life could look like.
From “Fail Forward” To “Unspoken”
If last year’s theme “Fail Forward” normalized iteration and the learning that comes with missteps, 2025 pushes that spirit toward the social. The courage to admit failure becomes the courage to admit need, to name what is missing in our schools, farms, neighborhoods, and media. The narrative arc is clear: from a culture of experimentation to a culture of care, with design as the bridge.
How To Experience Tanween In A Day
If you are in the Eastern Province and can only spare one day, make it count.
- Start With A Challenge Zone: Catch teams mid-sprint to feel the creative engine at work. Ask questions. Most will be eager to share constraints and early insights.
- Drop Into The Majlis: Choose a talk that links to your field (education, agriculture, urbanism, or communication) and listen for the unasked questions. That is the point this year.
- Walk The Exhibitions: Map the ideas you heard against objects and installations. Note the materials, the gestures, the way pieces invite touch or conversation.
- Close At The Design Market: Discover a brand you have never heard of, and speak to the maker about process. The best souvenirs from Tanween are stories and methods.
Why It Matters Now
All eyes are on Saudi right now. The calendar is crowded with biennales, fairs, conferences, and new spaces, and audiences are showing up. The 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale alone drew more than 222,000 visitors, while national surveys show over 80% of residents attended a cultural event in the last year.
Against that momentum, Tanween by Ithra feels like the right move, a platform that turns attention into opportunity. It invites designers to listen deeply, build with care, and put ideas in front of real audiences. For artists and creatives ready to be seen, Tanween is where the work can truly shine.
Inspired by Tanween?
Explore more Saudi art events, openings, and design weeks at KSA Art.