Abstract
Transitions towards sustainability need for radical and structural changes in the social, cultural and organisational dimensions in addition to technological innovations and infrastructural changes. Sustainability transitions have been a research and practice agenda for several decades. Currently, a new area in design for sustainability field is emerging that bridges the theories and practices of sustainability transitions with theory, education and practice of design. In this paper, we investigate the emergence and evolution of this new area through a literature review of selected publications that represent the current approaches of integrating the theories of sustainability transitions and design. We provide an overview of the current status of the field as well as a comparative analysis of the main contributions regarding their theoretical groundings, sustainability definitions/measures, framings of role of design(ers) and methodological propositions.
Keywords
sustainable design, design for sustainability, transition design, sustainability transitions
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.292
Citation
Gaziulusoy, A., and Erdoğan Öztekin, E. (2018) Design as a Catalyst for Sustainability Transitions, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.292
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Design as a Catalyst for Sustainability Transitions
Transitions towards sustainability need for radical and structural changes in the social, cultural and organisational dimensions in addition to technological innovations and infrastructural changes. Sustainability transitions have been a research and practice agenda for several decades. Currently, a new area in design for sustainability field is emerging that bridges the theories and practices of sustainability transitions with theory, education and practice of design. In this paper, we investigate the emergence and evolution of this new area through a literature review of selected publications that represent the current approaches of integrating the theories of sustainability transitions and design. We provide an overview of the current status of the field as well as a comparative analysis of the main contributions regarding their theoretical groundings, sustainability definitions/measures, framings of role of design(ers) and methodological propositions.