Top Ten in Systemic Design

The Top Ten for Ten celebrates RSD’s top contributors and SDA’s tenth annual symposium – RSD10, hosted by TU Delft. If you’ve been engaged in systemic design for a while, the Top Ten won’t surprise you, but you might enjoy the quick links to each person’s collection of contributions to RSD.

First, a bit of background. In 2012, Birger Sevaldson and Marit Helgesen held the first Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium at Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). This two-day seminar sparked a discussion about how we interpret systems thinking and its relationship to design thinking and design practice. RSD1 launched the movement of the designers, academics, and practitioners who contribute to RSD through the annual symposia.

Here we are—RSD10

Ten years later RSD10 posted an incredible 111 new contributions that weave systems thinking and design methodology in the systemic design interdiscipline. The RSD topic, “Methods & Methodology”, leads by the sheer number of contributions, a trend that RSD scientific committees have seen consistently over the years and represents 30 per cent of the catalogue. However, this year the emphasis has seen a shift to “Cases & Practice”. The change is in many ways thanks to TU Delft’s programming focus. But it might also signal the maturation of the field and the zeitgeist of our times. Contributions to “Socioecological Design” also remain an important topic. Of course, they reflect the positive influence of the UN’s Sustainable Development goals; however, the unity of design and sustainability is also grounded in the work of systemic design’s founding proponents.

Top Ten for Ten

Unlike RSD’s peer-review process, the Top Ten for Ten is a listicle that’s based on a simple criterion: the number of RSD contributions and citations – inclusive of presentations, papers, workshops, and gigamaps. You will likely recognise the top ten names because of their sustained commitment and dedication to establishing systemic design in academe and design practice. The list is alphabetical by each person’s last name and links to their RSD articles and profile in the Systemic Design Association member directory.

Top ten in systemic design +

In addition to the RSD authors on the list, you will also find significant contributions by searching for Palak Dudani, Tore Gulden, Dan Lockton, Adrian Paulsen, Jonathan Romm, Ben Sweeting, Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer, and Josina Vink.

RSD is run on volunteer fuel—including contributors, organisers, archivists, and network managers—and many other people who are core to this design movement. SDA relies on member fees to fund the costs of maintaining and updating RSDsymposium.org as an open-access resource licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Fees are also directed toward SDA’s member website and related network management costs.