Nila Rezaei
Co-founder & Design Director
RK Collective
How Do We Design Vibrant Communities?
How Do We Design Vibrant Communities?
As designers, We have never had more tools, more methods, more frameworks, And yet the feeling of collective life, of shared prosperity, of genuine community, has been slowly slipping. The feeling of collective prosperity, of participation, of belonging, has quietly narrowed. This keynote begins by asking what a vibrant community actually is: not as an aspiration, but as something with real characteristics that can be named, protected, and designed toward.
Drawing on community-led projects built through reclaimed materials, participatory storytelling, and shared cultural memory, Nila argues that designers carry more agency in this moment, so how can we use that agency? A call to return design to its original purpose: creating the conditions for people to feel prosperous, connected, and part of something larger than themselves.
Nila Rezaei
Nila Rezaei is working towards a design culture that builds dignity, one in which communities are active co-authors of the objects, spaces, and systems that shape their lives, and where design accounts for people, place, and planet together.
She is Co-Founder and Design Director of RK Collective, a Sydney-based product design and innovation studio working at the intersection of circular design, material storytelling, and social impact. She is interested in the political, cultural, and ecological dimensions of materials and products, treating co-design as a form of authorship, and making as a form of activism.
Nila has over ten years of commercial experience spanning material innovation, consumer products, packaging, furniture and homewares, electronics, mobility, spatial design and public art installations, where she uses design as a tool to restore connection, resilience, and dignity in a rapidly changing world.
Her flagship project Crafted Liberation, which transforms Iranian Women’s donated headscarves and reclaimed textiles into public seating using waste resources, has been recognised with the 2024 Good Design Award for Social Impact, the 2025 Seoul Design Award, and selected as a 2026 Doha Design Prize finalist.
With a background that bridges commercial design and critical practice, Nila is a Good Design Australia Ambassador. She chairs the Design Institute of Australia NSW Council, co-founded Industrial Design Xchange Sydney (IDX SYD), and teaches at UNSW Art & Design.
Passionate about sharing knowledge and nurturing future generations, Nila regularly speaks and exhibits work at national and international forums on sustainability, material innovation, and social design, inspiring others to see design as a powerful agent of cultural and systemic change.