Dezeen School Shows: a video game designed to explore the social expectations that Pakistani women experience is among the projects from students at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar.

Also featured is a project that reflects on the "quiet resilience of mangrove trees" and a proposal that reimagines food waste as a resource for sustainable design.

Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar

Institution: Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar
School: School of the Arts
Courses: Master of Fine Arts in Design
Tutors: Rab McClure, Marco Bruno, Giovanni Innella, Reema Abu Hassan, Stella Colaleo, Yasmeen Suleiman, Michael Wirtz, Robert Bianchi and Hadeer Omar

School statement:

"The MFA in Design programme is interdisciplinary because designers face complex problems that defy easy categorisation. Increasingly, artists and designers need to navigate between and blend disciplines, maximising resources and working adaptively to create new environments, visuals, messaging and artefacts.

"Our full-time, two-year graduate programme trains students to understand clients, collaborators, and design challenges in original and authentic ways.

"The programme combines aspects of fine arts studio practice, digital craft, architecture, and graphic, fashion, and product design, thereby providing a hybridised education.

"Our programme's strength lies in its ability to support each student's unique interests, providing a customised educational experience tailored to the needs of each individual."

Inherited Wounds: Navigating intergenerational trauma through cooperative play by Ayza Sheikh

"Inherited Wounds confronts the inherited expectations on Pakistani women, where strength is often equated with sacrifice, silence, and compromise. These ideals have shaped generations of women whose identities have been moulded through suppression rather than expression.

"This project offers a counter-narrative by creating an interactive, narrative-based video game designed to foster open dialogue between mothers and daughters.

"Played using a custom gesture-based controller, the game traces a protagonist's life across childhood, marriage and motherhood, stages that mirror shared generational experiences.

"Progressing through the game demands intimate cooperation, and emotion-driven dialogues, prompting reflection on personal choices and inherited roles.

"By transforming reflective play into a tool for healing, Inherited Wounds invites Pakistani women to move from silence to self-expression and from endurance to action."

Student: Ayza Sheikh
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Infinite Finite: A view on human progression through emergent generative systems by Fatima Abbas

"Infinite Finite explores the imbalance in human development, where material progress often outpaces ethical, spiritual and compassionate growth.

"Grounded in the concept of development, where simple interactions yield complex systems, the project examines patterns found in nature to reflect on the trajectory of human behaviour.

"At the core of the project is a generative digital tool that simulates a century of human progression through iterative, cellular interactions.

"This simulation is translated into ten visual tiles: wooden tesserae signify ethical growth and renewal, while rockite represents unethical paths marked by depletion and rigidity.

"By mapping historical behaviour through material and form, Infinite Finite invites reflection on the consequences of our collective choices and on the potential for a more balanced, ethically driven future."

Student: Fatima Abbas
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Crafting Futures: balancing tradition and technology in craft practices by Saga Elkabbash

"Crafting Futures explores the possibilities that emerge when tradition meets technology. In response to the growing decline of artisan skills and the pressures of mass production, the project pairs an experienced potter with a 3D printer, not to replace handcraft but to enter into a creative dialogue with it.

"The project highlights that digital fabrication can engage with, rather than replace, traditional making practices, emphasising the role of the maker's imagination.

"This collaboration results in a series of arresting hybrid clay vessels that reflect the strengths of both partners. The potter brings intuition, improvisation and embodied knowledge, while the printer contributes precision and repeatable complexity.

"Rather than viewing machines as threats to traditional handmaking possibilities, Crafting Futures positions them as collaborators. Together, they produce outcomes neither could achieve alone."

Student: Saga Elkabbash
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Beneath the Roots: Becoming native through mangrove teachings and wisdom by Shima Aeinehdar

"Beneath the Roots draws on the wisdom and quiet resilience of mangroves to investigate the naturalisation of humans through science, spirituality and storytelling. The project also looks at migration and cultural appropriation through the lens of Qatar's unique mangroves.

"Rooted in the landscapes of Qatar, the project uses the native Avicennia marina – the grey mangrove – as a metaphor for migration, cultural entanglement, and the complex process of becoming 'native' in a land that is both home and unfamiliar.

"The grey mangrove, which arrived on Qatari shores long ago, survives through a rare process of salt excretion: an act mirrored in the artist's own ritual of salt extraction.

"Through botanical compositions and the symbolic return of salt to the sea, the project suggests that nativisation is not a one-way act, but a continuous exchange between land and life."

Student: Shima Aeinehdar
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Into Thick Air by Syed Muhammad Erzum Naqvi

"Into Thick Air explores how cultural practices can inspire innovative responses to everyday contemporary challenges. Set in Lahore, a city infamous for its dangerously poor air quality, the project takes inspiration from the Basant kite festival, a vibrant symbol of joy and community.

"The project involves crafting kites from fabric coated with pollution-absorbing nanoparticles, transforming a traditional pastime into a citizen-led method of air purification. These treated kites enable residents of Lahore to actively participate in improving their environment, while also promoting collective action against an environmental hazard.

"By bridging cultural heritage and scientific innovation, Into Thick Air proposes a new framework for addressing hazardous city-life environment through localised, participatory solutions."

Student: Syed Muhammad Erzum Naqvi
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Food Waste Renaissance: From the table, for the table by Yasamin Shaikhi

"Food Waste Renaissance (FWR) reimagines food waste as a resource for sustainable design. Based in Qatar, where food waste accounts for nearly 60 per cent of urban waste, the project shifts focus from large-scale waste management to small-scale innovation.

"Through the project, food waste is transformed from everyday byproducts like rice husks and date pits into biodegradable materials that are used to create handcrafted lamps. The natural translucency and texture of these materials produce striking, one-of-a-kind pieces.

"By turning surplus into creative opportunity, FWR invites communities and designers to rethink waste and embrace circular design practices. The project highlights how traditional discard can evolve into meaningful solutions for a more sustainable, inspiring and responsible future."

Student: Yasamin Shaikhi
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Vessels of Spirituality: Merging Faith and Form by Maryam Altajer

"Drawing on traditional Islamic teachings, this project explores the spiritual and physical significance of natural materials such as frankincense, black sesame, and sidr (jujube) leaves – substances long used for healing and purification.

"While modern science emphasises their medicinal properties, their deeper metaphysical value is often overlooked.

"Similarly, the ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿāt, the mysterious disconnected letters that introduce many chapters, or surrahs, of the Qur'an, are believed to carry sacred resonance. In both cases, material form is seen as a pathway to spiritual understanding.

"Through a series of material experiments in religious texts, this work reimagines revered substances and sacred letterforms, crafting a design language where materiality becomes an expression of the divine.

"It offers a renewed engagement with Islamic material culture, bridging the sacred and the sensory, the ancient and the contemporary."

Student: Maryam Altajer
Course: Master of Fine Arts in Design

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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