About Ithra

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Ithra Design Week

Ithra Design Week is the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) annual celebration of design, creativity, and innovation, and a leading regional hub for design practices from Ithra and beyond. The program celebrates creativity and innovation across industries, where design can make a tangible impact. Evolving from the legacy of Tanween, Ithra Design Week expands from a platform for designers into a dynamic design ecosystem. It brings together international and regional designers, studios, thinkers, and institutions through a curated program of exhibitions, talks, workshops, masterclasses, installations, design challenges, and public engagement programs. Rooted in Saudi Arabia and connected globally, Ithra Design Week aims to be a globally leading design ecosystem

that reflects the region’s transformation while contributing meaningfully to international design practice. It serves as a space that cultivates, develops and accelerates design content, through nurturing ideas, experimentation and collaborations that shape the growth, visibility and relevance of the design scene within a global context. Moving beyond design as mere product or aesthetics, Ithra Design Week positions design as a lens for inquiry, interpretation and future-making, fostering exchange across disciplines, cultures and ways of thinking.

Redesigning the Default

Tanween has been revamped. Evolving from its former self, the annual design conference introduces its new identity: Ithra Design Week. The platform’s first edition asks a clear question: what happens after the default?

When the default is no longer enough, what do you design next? The inaugural theme, Redesigning the Default, begins where designing out of habit ends; it is the moment designers refuse to accept what already exists and take responsibility for what comes next. It marks a shift from inherited systems to deliberate choice, challenging designers to question the norm, interrupt the automatic, and actively define new directions.

Defaults are not neutral; they shape behavior, systems, and outcomes. This theme asserts design as an act of intention and authorship, a force that replaces passive acceptance with decision, transforming ideas into impact and possibilities into reality. “The best designs are those that challenge the norm and question preconceived notions.”