Andres Pineda, Ulrik Jørgensen and Erik Hagelskjær Lauridsen
sustainability
socio-technical
system design
In this paper we present the motivation, rationale and methodological outline of a framework for designing sustainable systems. The proposal builds on a discussion that draws on literature from the fields of: Sustainable Transitions, which claims that the necessary transformations of our modern technological systems require paradigm shifts and thus systemic change; Design, which have enriched the scope, scale, and character of objects of design overcoming the limited focus on products to embrace service systems, social innovation and transition design (Irwin, 2015); systemic thinking which has taken up the challenge and need to support design projects at different levels (Ryan, 2014); and socio-technical change, that has contributed with widely adopted theories and methods to analyse technologies in context as socio-technical networks (Latour, 2005). The result is a three stage meta-methodology that guides the collaborative process of designing new mid-range systems like local energy systems, neighbourhood recycling systems and cycles of circular economy for products. We will illustrate the analysis with the presentation of four exemplary projects from students where different aspects of systemic change are salient: inter-systemic dynamics (Blåvoulevard, 2015; Affasldsystem AFK, 2016); intra-systemic dynamics (Energi Sydhavenen, 2016) and circular economy (Ikea, 2016). These projects are developed by students at the 5th semester of the BSc Sustainable Design Engineering, however the aspects discussed here on system design are relevant for the whole education and for the MSc in Sustainable Design Engineering.
Irwin, T. (2015). Transition design: A proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research. Design and Culture, 7(2), 229-246.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford university press.
Ryan, A. (2014). A Fram
