Quick Guide to Sustainable Design Strategies

Life-centred design aims for regenerative futures by designing for:Product Lifecycle—Expanding responsibility of product design from focusing only on the time the product is with a target user to including the extraction of raw materials required to make the product, parts and product manufacturing, shipping and transportation, selling, using, disc... See more

Regenerative design seeks to not merely do less harm when designing, but rather to put design to work as a positive force that restores, renews or revitalises. A concept that’s inherent in nature, regeneration should be the approach for how we interact with the planet.

It seems a radical idea, but as the climate crisis deepens, ‘sustainable design’ and ‘doing less harm’ are not enough to avert catastrophe – we have to find ways to replenish ecosystems while meeting our own needs. 

The design world reinvents assumptions and recombines ideas to turn “What if?” and “How might we?” into “What we can do.” Design thinking will be critical in taking the world of Collaborative Consumption out of the realm of possibilities and into real workable solutions, solutions that fulfill our consumer whims, desires, and unarticulated needs, b

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The universal patterns and principles the cosmos uses to build stable, healthy, and sustainable systems throughout the real world can and must be used as a model for economic-system design.

Taking on a holistic approach to design and systems’ thinking can help us understand how different elements relate to each other — and helps us remember that the world is an interconnected web. Everything we design is part of a whole that has a wider social and ecological impact.