What Design Can Do

With two decades of experience in design-led research, social innovation, and community engagement, Quicksand brought critical contextual depth to the WDCD Challenges in India. We have long been committed to unpacking and addressing wicked problems—those deeply complex, interwoven challenges that resist simple solutions. Grounded in the Indian context, our approach blends rigorous design research with participatory methods to uncover local urgencies and generate actionable, community-rooted insights. Over the years, this has included the creation of localized design briefs and the facilitation of open challenges to activate collective imagination and catalyze change. Alongside our sister agency, Unbox Cultures, we have also curated rich, multi-sensory WDCD experiences in Delhi, from speaker curation and interactive exhibitions to workshops, mixers, and sustainable spatial design.

Methodology: Context-Driven, Collaborative, and CreativeAt the heart of Quicksand’s approach is the belief that global ideas must be deeply adapted to local ecosystems. Across each edition, our work has included:

• Localizing global challenge themes based on urgent urban and environmental issues
• Facilitating Learning Labs that bring together challenge participants, subject experts, and system stakeholders
• Mapping systemic barriers and opportunities within sectors such as energy, waste, food, textiles, and urban planning

Supporting challenge participants with tools, insights, and connections to refine and pilot their ideas.

Evolving Areas of Focus: 2018-2025

Clean Energy Challenge (2018)

Delhi faces a critical energy challenge: rapid urbanization and a booming population are fueling a surge in building construction. These buildings, both commercial and residential, are major energy consumers, driving up greenhouse gas emissions and hindering the city's shift to clean energy. Haphazard planning often overlooks sustainability, especially in the urgent push for affordable housing, leaving millions in informal settlements without basic electricity or sanitation.This design challenge aimed to accelerate Delhi's transition to renewable energy by focusing on smart design. The strategy centered on two key areas: passive building design and decentralized energy solutions. The goal was to prove that sustainability doesn't have to take a backseat in rapid urban development.Key explorations among these were the promotion of passive building strategies like natural ventilation and daylighting to drastically reduce energy consumption for heating, cooling, and lighting. Simultaneously, the challenge focused on scaling decentralized energy solutions, particularly rooftop solar installations, making them affordable and easily maintained for local power generation. Finally, it emphasized fostering DIY ingenuity for energy reduction, advocating for more sustainable building codes, and integrating a blend of traditional practices and modern technology to align new construction with Delhi's climate and culture.

By prioritizing passive strategies, decentralized renewables, and community-centric solutions, the challenge provided practical blueprints for reducing the city's energy footprint and accelerating its journey toward a cleaner, greener energy future.

No Waste Challenge (2021)

Delhi, a city generating 10,000 tonnes of waste daily, faces a severe landfill crisis with sites overflowing for over a decade. This stems from a rapidly declining repair culture and the rise of a "throw-away" mentality, despite India's historical tradition of frugality and resourcefulness where the concept of "waste" was largely unfamiliar. Traditional Indian households prioritized durability, shared resources, and a robust repair economy. However, easy and cheap replacements have eroded these sustainable practices, leading to a "mopping approach" to waste management and a neglect of decentralized solutions and the vital informal waste sector.

Through the "No Waste Challenge" aimed to counter this trend by championing circular design thinking grounded in India's inherent values of frugality and sharing. Recognizing that "waste" is a misnomer—a resource out of place—the challenge focused on redefining our relationship with materials.

Key Exploration Areas:

• Integrating the Informal Sector: Labs explored how the millions of informal waste workers, currently marginalized, could be better integrated into formal waste management systems, leveraging their existing networks and knowledge.
• Scaling Decentralized Practices: The initiative investigated how community-led, decentralized waste management approaches, which align with traditional practices, could be scaled sustainably across Delhi.
• Design for Mindful Consumption: The challenge sought to inspire designers to create products and systems that foster lasting relationships with material objects, moving away from disposable goods.
• Reviving Traditional Wisdom: A core objective was to demonstrate how design could instill pride in local traditions and sustainable practices, emphasizing that sustainability isn't a new concept but a forgotten heritage.
• Educating for Circular Values: The program looked at how design could empower and educate Delhi's youth to embrace circular values, shaping a future generation that prioritizes resource efficiency and mindful living.

By reframing waste as a resource and drawing upon India's rich history of resourcefulness and sharing, the "No Waste Challenge" provided a critical framework for designing a more sustainable, circular future for Delhi, one where landfills shrink and communities thrive.

Make It Circular (2022)

As part of the global Make It Circular Challenge, Quicksand led the research and insight development for the India edition—bringing local context, traditional wisdom, and contemporary challenges into a worldwide conversation on circularity.

Anchored in themes of food, textiles, waste, and the built environment, the challenge invited participants to imagine regenerative systems rooted in India’s long-standing culture of frugality and repair. While circularity is often framed as a modern solution, India’s past is rich with intuitive, low-waste practices—from shared utensils and toolbox households to recycled quilts and climate-responsive architecture.

Through Learning Labs and design briefs, participants engaged with policymakers, recyclers, and grassroots innovators to explore how these values could inform more resilient, future-ready systems. Key insights from India included:

• Waste: Delhi generates over 10,000 tonnes of garbage daily. Design interventions focused on integrating informal waste workers, decentralizing waste systems, and reframing waste as a resource rather than a problem.
• Food: Urban detachment from food sources has eroded once-common low-waste practices. Design sought to revive food knowledge systems that valued creativity, leftovers, and seasonal living.
• Textiles: As both a global textile exporter and emerging consumption hub, India faces a growing pre- and post-consumer waste crisis. Traditional crafts like kantha and sujani inspired circular pathways for reuse, repair, and storytelling.
• Built Environment: In response to fast, unsustainable urban growth, participants explored how vernacular materials and passive cooling techniques could reduce dependence on energy-intensive infrastructure.

Across all these sectors, a recurring theme emerged: India’s circular future lies not just in innovation, but in reconnecting with practices that once came naturally—those that were local, shared, and built to last.

Redesign Everything (2024)

This pop-up edition in Delhi invited diverse participants- designers, students, practitioners, and local actors, to rethink existing systems and materials through the lens of WDCD’s eight circular design strategies, from “Reduce & Refuse” to “Restore & Reimagine.” By centering climate resilience and circularity, the event surfaced urgent environmental and socio-economic issues specific to the region while opening up space for speculative, regenerative design interventions.Our research highlights how climate impacts in India—such as crop loss from extreme weather, rising urban temperatures, and mounting energy demands—are disrupting livelihoods, displacing communities, and eroding cultural ties to land and identity.

We then laid out how design offers a way forward: from developing user-friendly, locally rooted climate adaptation tools to promoting passive cooling in buildings and reducing food waste in agriculture. Beyond solutions, it can shift narratives—centering traditional knowledge, inclusive collaboration, and regenerative futures.

Impact and Implementation

Over five years, Quicksand’s collaboration with What Design Can Do has helped build a vibrant ecosystem of climate-conscious creativity in India. Through a series of localized challenges, events, and learning labs, the initiative has equipped hundreds of designers and innovators with the tools, networks, and insights needed to address systemic environmental issues. By anchoring these efforts in real-world contexts—from Delhi’s waste crisis to the circular economy in textiles and food—Quicksand enabled solutions that are not only imaginative but also grounded and actionable. This work has fostered cross-sector collaboration between creatives, policy influencers, grassroots actors, and technical experts, while also amplifying India’s contributions to the global climate design movement. The results continue to shape public discourse, inform city-level strategy, and spotlight Indian innovations on an international stage.