IE University Students Recognized at the Ibero-American Biennial of Design's Education and Design Days
An initiative led by students and faculty from the IE School of Architecture&Design received recognition for its impact on community engagement and social innovation.
Madrid, 27 November 2025 – A student-led initiative from the Bachelor in Design program at the IE School of Architecture&Design received recognition by being featured in the Education and Design Days of the Ibero-American Biennial of Design (BID) held in Madrid. The 2025 edition of the encounter explored the theme "Design with Purpose," focusing on how universities contribute to social and industry transformation through design practice.
The event brought together academic experts, designers, and institutions for two days of dialogues, lectures, rapid fire presentations, and labs focused on design’s ability to foster local engagement, cultural resilience and responses to emerging challenges.
The initiative, titled "Common Space" (Espacio Común) was developed by Bachelor in Design alumni Alex Boubou, Bárbara Hernández, Laura Moreno, Simón Sánchez, and Valeria Sierra, in collaboration with the association TetuánCrea, and under the guidance of Professor Clara Zarza.
The first activation of this initiative took place in October 2025 during Foro NESI's Proximity Week in Plaza Juan Muñoz Martín in Madrid. IE University students designed three interventions encouraging residents and passers-by to observe, participate, reflect and connect without interrupting the daily routine of the square.
These interventions focused on play, shared neighbourhood identity, and everyday strategies of belonging - reimagining a typically underused public space as a site of encounter and community expression. For a few hours, the plaza became a living laboratory of collective creativity, showing how design can gently reshape urban dynamics, spark conversations across generations and cultures, and strengthen the social fabric of a neighbourhood:
- El Recreo, which explores play as a way to reimagine spaces and foster intergenerational conversations driven by creative thinking and free imagination;
- You Belong Here. Vernacular solutions against urban loneliness in Madrid (Final Degree Project by Bárbara Hernández Gaitán, 2024), which examines unwanted loneliness in Tetuán through ethnographic and mapping methods that uncover everyday forms of community resilience. The project highlights how fostering non-commercial spaces for dialogue strengthens neighbourhood belonging and care;
- Lessico del Sé (Final Degree Project by Alex Boubou, 2025) is a self-ethnographic investigation into migrant identity, belonging and intercultural coexistence.
In addition, "Common Space" (Espacio Común) incorporates a strategic design project developed in the Bachelor in Design’s Design Studio IV, in partnership with TetuánCrea.
Through these combined lines of inquiry - community ethnography, cultural identity, and strategic design - the project shows how student work evolves into grounded, impactful initiatives when academic research merges with local collaboration. It highlights how design students can act as catalysts for local transformation, working alongside communities, institutions and organizations to reimagine shared spaces and strengthen ties between people and places.