I write from the middle—the in-between space of the asterisks where hope-meets-action. Here in dialouge with the 4TU Design United’s DDW25 showcase, I find myself reflecting on what is conjured by ‘crisis’: ecological crisis, housing crisis, crisis of the imagination or the polycrisis not as an abstract theme to be designed out of, but as a lived condition. Hope in this context may be a necessary embodied practice for acting-with-hope, in the face of what José Muñoz has called, an often heartbreaking reality. 

What do you think of, when you think of a better future?

Popular media and games in particular are increasingly gaining attention for their potential to shape sustainable future imaginaries and engage players and player communities with environmental concerns. Both digital and analogue entertainment games are increasingly designed to reflect environmental sensibilities; for example, video games like Beecarbonize (2023) and Terra Nil (both 2023) allow players to explore planet, while board games like Daybreak (2023) require players to cooperate to formulate global climate policies and improve their countries’ ecological and societal resilience. 

Dr. Sage Cammers-Goodwin

Design is the means by which we consciously change our environment, affecting not only our engagement with the world, but also that of other beings who, consciously or not, also shape the world we live in. The rational nature of design can cause us to adopt an abstract and aseptic view of the world, causing us to forget the ecological nature of our existence. To cope with the world's complexity, humans have developed sophisticated abstract models. These models have shaped the technological systems that have allowed us to become hybrid beings who now exist in both a modeled, complex physical world and a complex, model-based virtual realm. How are we adapting to this new environmental awareness? Do we understand the world we inhabit?

Jodi Sturge, Universit of Twente

What is a thriving planet? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines thriving as characterized by success or prosperity and, ironically, gives the capitalist example of a thriving business. Elon Musk might say we already have a thriving planet.

Nazli Cila

Francesca Toso (UT), Sebastian Cmentowski (TU/e), Eric Gu (TUD), Roberta Antognini (UT), Erik van der Spek (TU/e)

Milene Gonçalves (TUD), Armagan Karahanoglu (UT), Jesse Joshua Benjamin (TU/e), Vera van den Burg (TUD) Associate Chair 3: Wilbert Tabone (TUD)

Maarten Houben (TU/e),  Eda Karaosmanoglu (TUD), Siyuan Huang (UT), Zhuochao Peng (TUD), Govert Flint (TUD)

Federico Andreotti, Riel Bessai, Salma Rian

Interspecies Library is an independent archive dedicated to the curation of contemporary artists’ books exploring interspecies futures: the manifold unseen and potential relationships that flourish among different lifeforms. A wide variety of printed materials are housed in the archive, including books, pamphlets, zines, posters, ephemera, and other artifacts, which are sourced from artists and independent publishers around the world.

Together, academic design research and design education form the foundations of our design discipline. Much has been discussed about design research and its relationship with, and impact on, design practice. As a design academic who transitioned into design practice for nearly a decade and is now active in healthcare, I believe this year’s exhibition, cases, and design debates can benefit from a traditional design critique.

Design is a way of speculating about how things could be: it's about imagining possible futures. This, famously, is what is advocated by the pioneers of Speculative Design, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. I dare to say that it's imperative for designers to always, in some way, use design to envision and experiment with our desirable futures. They need to ask and find answers for the questions of what it is that our future needs; how do we want to live, and what do we find important in our lives. And consequently, what do I, as a designer, design, why, and for whom?

Designing for the future has an allure - why design for the way things are now when we can be bold, experiment with, and paint pictures of worlds just on the verge of becoming? There's a thrill to making something new, probing the edges of possibility by asking not "How might we?" but "What might be?". So, why is this important? The things we work with are more fluid, more interconnected, and more continuously in flux than ever before. The purpose of technologies is only figured out after they've been made and released: mobile phones are only useful for the ecosystem of services and interactions that spring up around them; the capabilities of new AI systems are only discovered through investigation, often in public, as communities experiment to see what's possible - "does it do this?". At the same time, we can recognise that the value of design is not only in making better systems but in investigating the possible worlds that might be made. This is what Pierce would call 'frictional' design: accelerating current trends, exploring counterfactuals, creating space to imagine how the world might be different, and shaping the direction of travel.

A ritual central to science is the PhD defence. At Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands, this ceremony unfolds in an ornate auditorium where stained glass windows cast coloured light onto centuries-old wood panels. Then picture a procession of senior scholars, each adorned in black robes and peculiar hats as if plucked from a medieval painting.

What makes people truly happy? This question has gained new significance in a world that’s rethinking the limits of materialism. As economic expansion continues to raise social and environmental concerns, designers are looking for a deeper sense of purpose. Many have embraced a modern form of humanism as a guide to creating designs that foster human capabilities. This philosophy, rooted in Socratic thought, advanced by Abraham Maslow, and reinvigorated by the positive psychology movement, adapts a holistic view on human existence, emphasizing the potential for human self-actualization—the flourishing of individuals and communities.

Doenja Oogjes

The idea of 'becoming ' is essential. We need to open up the meaning of the identity concept towards relations with a multiplicity, with others. Through opposition to the idea of identity as something completely closed, already formed, and static. We are subjects under construction; we are always becoming something. Rosy Braidotti, 2019, CCCBLAB (Dossier, Post-humanism)

“Design refusal” is an emerging movement in design research and practice that places social justice at the centre of design processes. It raises broader questions about the limits of co-creation and public participation in design. Design refusal has largely foregrounded the responsibility and agency of designers and engineers to disrupt potentially harmful projects within powerful institutions. One key example of design refusal is the collective action of software engineers at Google, where they mobilised against collaboration with the US military (Robinson et al., 2024). Although these acts of refusal offer important lessons, design scholars highlight how focusing on refusal within powerful institutions creates a flawed theory of change which relies on “the goodwill of elites, rather than supporting people’s agency to shape their relationships to data regimes” (Zong and Matias, 2024: 2).

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Design is inherently a future-oriented practice. But how can we envision desirable futures on a troubled planet? Does society have a "crisis of imagination"? And if so, can designers help us both speculate about practices of tomorrow, and inspire us to take action? Climate Futures Now! brings together projects from the 4TU community, via the Design United Expo and an afternoon Dialogues session at DDW23. 

Promises of AI and Opportunities for Design.

Last year in this space, Nolen Gertz wrote,

Computers are ubiquitous, surrounding and infiltrating almost every aspect of our daily lives. Everything from our coffee makers to our smartphones operates on code. Yet our interactions with machines and programs remain to the largest extents bound to pre-defined routines or interfaces.

Our material world is in a state of flux. As we all are aware by now, the global overconsumption of natural resources can’t continue. The ecological problems caused by material production, use, and disposal need to be solved urgently.

Making materials and textiles in the postdigital era involves a synthesis of multiple, multi-species skills and mediums. The agency of fibre, substance, algorithm, and AI work in a joint endeavour with human and non-human participants in contexts of the future everyday. An everyday that is changed by these evolving practices. How we live and make tomorrow is already being constituted by how we are living and making today. 

The last years has seen a great surge of more-than-human (MTH) research and design. The field has explored ways of understanding, investigating, and imagining the world anew by going beyond human perception and cognition. Building on a strong theoretical ground of post-humanism, these pioneering works paved the way for studying why there is a need and what it means to have a MTH approach in design. Now it is time to connect these theories to MTH practice and develop our designerly ways of framing the scope and “doing” MTH design.   

Mathias Funk, Sara Colombo (TUE), Philip van Allen (TUD) and Cristina Zaga (UT)

Sara Colombo and Mathias Funk - Eindhoven University of Technology

Marie-Louise Stisen Kjerstein Sørensen, Bjarke Vognstrup Fog, Line Have Musaeus and Marianne Graves Petersen

Ambra Trotto (RISE) and Caroline Hummels (TUE)

Annemiek van Boeien - Delft University of Technology

Robert Collins - Umeå University

Elisa Giaccardi - Delft University of Technology