Designing Transitions

Professor Dr Derk Loorbach

Director of DRIFT and Full Professor of Socio-Economic Transitions at the Faculty of Social Science, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

We are moving into a period of unimaginable and unknown turbulence: the pressures have been building up for decades, and acceleration is imminent. Whether we want it or not, the era of improving a fossil-based and linear economy is over while and collapsing. At the same time, we have yet to find an alternative development pathway.

In this keynote, Prof Dr Derk Loorbach provides a transition perspective to get a grip on the complexities and uncertainty of this era of transformative change and suggest a way forward: development by design. Acting as chief curator of the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam in 2022, he invites designers and researchers to join transition practices to collectively develop imaginative and institutional designs for a nature-positive future.

Profile

Derk Loorbach is one of the founders of the transition management approach as a new form of governance for sustainable development. He has over one hundred publications in this area and has been involved as an action researcher in numerous transition processes with government, business, civil society and science. He is a frequently invited keynote speaker in and outside Europe.

– From Drift for Transition