FDSA 2026: Muzamil Mutalib avows for his anticipation of the Future Design Star

by Aisha Capulong

Muzamil Mutalib signs City University Malaysia into the Future Design Star Award initiative, and along with it comes a determination for bringing value and acclaim to his students and the university as a whole

We sat down with Muzamil Mutalib — Deputy Dean of City University Malaysia’s Architecture and Built Environment faculty — during their MOU signing with the 2026 Future Design Star Award (FDSA) for a short interview on his prevailing expectations around the initiative and for his participating students.

Since 1984, City University Malaysia has approached education as an aspect of life that is fun and vibrant. Having since adapted its courses to run in line with the new hybrid norms of the world, City University Malaysia equips its students with firsthand industry insight, making it almost a given for the institution to join FDSA: an initiative developed to submerge students in an experience mimicking the competitive nature of the Malaysian design scene.

City University Malaysia signs MOU with Future Design Star Award

Exclusive interview with Muzamil Mutalib

Why did City University Malaysia join FDSA? What do you hope to result from joining as an institution?

Why not, right? As a lecturer, I think it’s very good exposure to the students. The more platforms that we join, it benefit[s] the students, the lecturers, the university itself. We can set the standards. I [was] looking for something new and [FDSA came at the] perfect time.

Do you have any certain expectations from your students who will get to participate in FDSA?

The expectation for our students is to be better than their seniors. We are not trying to compete with other universities, what we try to compete [with] is what we produced before and we want to be better than before. The industry is getting bigger and bigger, we have to do better. Now, technology is very fast, so the expectation is back [on] us (educators) as the starting point.

About the 2026 Future Design Star Award

The Future Design Star Award is an initiative that seeks to discover and platform young talents within verified design institutions across the nation whose work reveals an immense level of potential for the industry.

With a unique system in place, ACGMEDIA works directly with a handful of distinguished schools and academies across Malaysia to bottleneck only the very best projects — eliminating the ambiguity of participants and solidifying the relationship between the institution and its award candidate students.

The Future Design Star Award evaluation process requires each member institution to submit a fixed number of their very best student projects. The top three students of each school will then present to a panel of esteemed judges to compete for the ultimate prize: winning at the DOTY level. Following this, the three student projects that led the live presentation stage will receive their win at the DOTY 2026 ceremony, where they gain access to a crowd of Malaysia’s most elite design studios and industry partners.