Design for Sustainability (DFS)

• Design is understood as purposeful attempts to change the existing practices into something more preferable
• Design is about forming ‘objects’ that intervenes in status quo by ‘setting people and things in motion’, lay-people, professionals etc..
• Design is also about non-linearity and emergence as the responses and effects of intervention are unpredictable for both social and material stakeholders
• There is wide recognition amongst practitioners and academics that design can foster both creativity, innovation and change  - economists, engineers, doctors, the Bible and the Pope etc…

Research areas

•  Staging collaborative design in health care amongst the elderly people with dementia (Pro-Active Care for Elderly with dementia - PACE)
  • Staging front end innovation
• Sustainable production and consumption:
  • Circular Economy as design of strategies, tools, systems to create an re-generative economy
  • Design of new bio-materials and production processes (construction sector)
• Valuation devices, markets and politics:
  • The role of designed calculative devices for financial and social valuation and re-valuation of energy resources in Denmark
• Design of Pedagogic approaches to Sustainable Engineering - adapting the engineering sciences to be at the service of sustainability goals