Karima Weinman

MID Industrial Design

Material Costs

I am a designer from Marrakech who brings hidden narratives to light through data visualization. The themes of my work center around how migration and displacement shape identity and belonging.

The Central Mediterranean Migration Route is the deadliest migratory route in the world. Over 26,000 people have died or gone missing in its waters over the past 11 years. Each fragment in these terrazzo tiles represents one of those people.

3, 4, and 5-sided fragments reflect children, women, and men, respectively. The hues encode the cause of death, with the terracotta color signifying drowning. The incidents move linearly along the tiles, with every 6 tiles marking a year of tragedy.

By treating data as a raw material, this embodied experience slows down comprehension in order to provoke reflection and humanize the data. This project references Italian terrazzo workmanship, typically found in spaces that evoke familiarity, warmth, and belonging. Those domestic qualities are contrasted with the realities that migrants in transit are facing: feelings of foreignness, the unknown, and being far from home.