Louise Dumon and Francesca Ostuzzi
Introducing sustainability and circular economy (CE) in higher education is becoming a key instrument for tackling climate change. When we look at design curricula, several skills are required for designing for circularity among which the systems-oriented focus and the intrapersonal skill of collaboration. In this paper, we report on a case study where 15 teams of design students re-designed a university system to enable the use and development of DIY bio-based circular materials. Specifically, what we observed is the correlation between the systems archetypes used by the students both diagnostically and prognostically (Braun, 2002) and the number of collaborations the students created with other teams and external stakeholders. Results show that by adopting a systemic view, students could take in consideration possible positive and negative effects of (not) collaboration with other actors in their system. It is not yet explored the depth of this correlation, which could become a focus of future studies.
Keywords: Systems Archetypes, Systems Loops, Design Education, Collaboration, DIY bio-based materials