Transition Design as Holistic Science in Action

Sustainability is rapidly becoming an issue of critical importance for designers and society as a whole. A complexity of dynamically interrelated ecological, social, cultural, economic, and psychologi- cal (awareness) problems interact and converge in the current crisis of our unsustainable civilization. However, in a constantly chang- ing environment, sustainability is not some ultimate endpoint, but instead is a continuous process of learning and adaptation. Designing for sustainability not only requires the redesign of our habits, lifestyles, and practices, but also the way we think about design. Sustainability is a process of coevolution and co-design that involves diverse communities in making flexible and adaptable design decisions on local, regional, and global scales. The transition towards sustainability is about co-creating a human civilization that flourishes within the ecological limits of the planetary life support system. Design is fundamental to all human activity. At the nexus of values, attitudes, needs, and actions, designers have the potential to act as transdisciplinary integrators and facilitators. The map of value systems and perspectives described by Beck and Cowan 1 as “Spiral Dynamics” can serve as a tool in facilitating “transdisciplinary design dialogue.” Such dialogue will help to integrate multiple perspectives and the diverse knowledge base of different disciplines, value systems, and stakeholders. ... ((( Co-Author: Prof Seaton Baxter; University of Dundee and Schumacher College, not yet on academia.edu )))

11th International Sustainability Transition Conference, 2020

Society is currently facing significant and persistent “wicked” challenges undermining the sustainability of social and natural systems alike (Rockström et al., 2018; O’Brien, 2011). The call for radical transformations that may result in ecological, infrastructural and societal regime shifts to more desirable system configurations, challenges researchers to transcend disciplinary and epistemological divides and embrace new knowledges and skills (Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 2019). The term “wicked problems”, which emerged from a design perspective in the seventies (Rittel & Webber, 1973) has been adopted to describe the complex nature of our sustainability issues from across different fields of knowledge (Preiser et al. 2018). Although design is currently emerging as an integrative, transdisciplinary, explorative and pragmatic discipline (Buchanan, 1992; Brown et al., 2010) with the capability to support different transition pathways –transforming lives, narratives, systems, structures and environments (Irwin, 2015; Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2019), it has not been fully engaged by scholars from other fields. Furthermore, following Ahlborg et al. (2019) in their conceptualization of the need to adopt a socio-technical-ecological systems –STES– approach that understands the key role of technology in mediating all human-environment relations, there is a potential to widen the scope of discussions through the reintegration of design as a “science of the artificial” (Simon, 1988). While synthesizing knowledge and skills coming from the sciences and the humanities, design’s material culture represents a distinct discipline that simultaneously addresses understanding, communication and action (Buchanan, 1992; Cross 1982) rendering it particularly apt to navigate the indeterminacy and complexity of our challenges and helping identify and imagine novel opportunities for action and change. Because technology is the result of human endeavour and design, the “socio technical assemblages” that it shapes (Duclos, 2010; Latour, 2019) become active shapers of our realities. By dealing with artificiality and technology –materially and symbolically– design is mediating relations while also shaping and being shaped through its unfolding (Willis, 2006). This has led to a deeper understanding of design’s role in enabling or limiting future possibilities (Fry, 2008) within the comprehension of its current pervasive mediation and existence (Margolin, 2002). To help advance the understanding of technology, and to articulate the potential contributions of integrating design capabilities into teams working towards sustainability transitions and transformations, this work proposes an initial conceptual model that is materialized as visual graphics and tables. These visuals are proposed as tools to enable bridging the STS and SES conceptual models for understanding sustainability transformations and as such, encourage more collaborations across these communities. By particularly highlighting the importance of attending to technology and its links to the field of design, Transition Design is argued as a promising mediator. With a focus on enhancing capacities for transformability and resilience, further correlations between Resilience Thinking and design are drawn, while the relevance of integrating this approach is outlined and highlighted.

2016

The transition design framework works within the limits of the ecological boundary of the natural world. This position resonates with a deeper and more radical response to unsustainability, particularly when compared to mainstream design activity, which mainly responds to the economic imperative. This paper explores ways to educate the eco-literate designer and addresses the potential for designed outcomes to grow levels of ecoliteracy through the way designs are interacted with, used and adapted in their lifetimes.

2013

This is a critical time in design. Concepts and practices of design are changing in response to historical developments in the modes of industrial design production and consumption. Indeed, the imperative of more sustainable development requires profound reconsideration of design today. Theoretical foundations and professional definitions are at stake, with consequences for institutions such as museums and universities as well as for future practitioners. This is ‘critical’ on many levels, from the urgent need to address societal and environmental issues to the reflexivity required to think and do design differently.

Design as Agent of Change, seeks to understand a phenomenon in the field of design as it gets involved with the paradigm of sustainability. By comprehending the systemic causes that drive this transformation and the conflict existing between unsustainable way of living and sustainability, we find a good opportunity for design to get involved in the transition for a sustainable future. The revision made, also allow us to realize that this task will also require changes in the design discipline and by using as reference the four agencies to create a culture of sustainability by design that Tony Fry proposes, we show some examples of initiatives that are triggering this change. As we revised the attributes that can make designers a promising agent and understand the process that allows a subject to become an Agent from the sociological perspective. A question still remains un answered, How can Design could become an Agent of Change? So a proposal of three stages of formation of the agency in design is presented, with the aim not only to provide an overview of the phenomenon but as an opportunity to trigger a dialogue about experiences and reflections, so we reflect about the importance and challenges for Design as Agent of Change.

The term 'ecology' used as a metaphor was picked up by the discipline of Design in the late 1980's with theorists such as Branzi, Manzini, Pantzar and Krippendorff's exploration of 'the ecology of the artificial'. This ecological metaphor played an important part in the re-assessment of Design's role in line with social and environmental issues. As evident in the Munich Design Charter of 1990, an ecological model was used to initiate a debate over the fundamental role Design plays in developing our future. However, during the ensuing decade and a half, understanding of 'ecology' and notions of sustainability have changed considerably. This paper aims to re-visit the ecological metaphor, to see if 'ecology' is still a useful context for understanding how Design can play a role in sustainable change. The paper will start with a brief exploration of what 'ecology' has come to mean. It will go on to show how 'ecology' has been used by the field of Design, particularly as a metaphor in the phrase 'ecology of the artificial'. It concludes by proposing a context for Design that might be more effective in conceptualising how the field can be of significant value in sustainable change.

In this paper we discuss the sustainable design opportunities that are arising from a shared agenda between design and the university. As international experience demonstrates, sustainable design remains largely theoretical, and has had great difficulty in achieving significant traction in education and practice (Findeli 2008). We are increasingly frustrated as sustainable design educators by the scarcity of examples of sustainable design practice—there are many examples of low impacting products, but few examples, especially in Australia, of commercially viable, real world sustainable design projects that achieve ‘systemic discontinuity’ in highly resource-consumptive lifestyles. We shall discuss how we have applied Tony Fry’s concept of ‘redirective practice’ (2009) to re-think the role of design in our particular university context. For Fry, design re-made is a meta-discipline, drawing together disparate knowledge under the ethical directive of ‘the sustainment’. We see design for sustainability as located at the project level, as an initiator and facilitator of a change process which is necessarily collaborative. We have brought this conception of design to the university’s sustainability agenda as, similarly to design, it is being called upon to take a leadership role in sustainability as it educates the graduates who will be determining the sustainability or not of our human systems. As a project field for sustainable design exploration the university is rich in expertise and its community and campuses provide ‘a microcosm for society’ (Cortese 2003:19). Whilst it has the know-how within its disparate academic disciplines, higher education ‘is generally organized into highly specialized areas of knowledge’ wherein cross-disciplinarily collaboration is a significant challenge (Cortese 2003:16). What we have found and are exploring in a range of projects that will be elaborated on in this paper, is that design as a meta-discipline provides i) the means to bridge these disciplinary gaps and ii) the action strategies necessary to initiate projects of lasting impact with high learning potential.

Changing the Change, 2008

How can design participate in the great task of building a sustainable system? The primary tool in this transition is systems thinking. Design can facilitate change by learning to work with systems. Concepts such as design science, ecological literacy, footprinting and transformation design help. Yet a sustainable system is not something designers can deliver to communities. Communities are complex systems composed of people that need to engage with change to make change happen. The Transition movement engages communities in the collaborative design of a ‘Local Energy Descent Plan’. The movement is a vision of UK permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins, and is now being enthusiastically adopted by communities worldwide. This paper explores new tools and concepts in design and the Transition movement.

Nummer No 11, 2023

In the design community, as in other disciplines, the environmental crisis has been misjudged and insufficiently addressed for decades. But as the scale of the crisis grows, so too do insights and creativity regarding how the problems of climate change can be addressed, be it using the methods and forms of expression of design or through interdisciplinary exchange. Especially for students at art and design universities, preparing for an unknown future entails the duty, but also the freedom, to experiment in a safe space and to envision a possible and desirable transformation towards sustainability.

2006

Emma Dewberry has worked in the area of design for sustainability for over 14 years. She graduated with a PhD in Ecodesign from the Open University's Design Innovation Group in 1996 and has since held academic posts addressing ecodesign, innovation processes and sustainable ...