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Welcome to DesignLAB!
An interdisciplinary platform for researchers, educators, and practitioners who use design as a way of thinking, making, and collaborating. Based at the School of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Sheffield, DesignLAB brings together those exploring design as a methodology in research and teaching. It’s a space to share ideas, challenge perspectives, and build connections across the built environment disciplines.
Join us in shaping new ways of seeing, questioning, and creating through design! Feel free to explore the design tools in our library, add one of yours or engage with our media content.
truly participatory, inherently social, place-based, and open-ended practices for knowledge production
framework to connect communities with alternative visions of future, supporting social and pedagogical imagination
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The Design Tools Library is a repository of design tools fostering interdisciplinary engagement towards the recognition and advancement of ‘research by design’. Design Tools Library is curated through the three key themes - Co-production, Care and Futures - that emerged from the collaborative reflection workshops on research and scholarship.
This open library initiative welcomes contributions and collaboration. You can contribute by proposing design tools and case studies (research, practice-led research, pedagogies).
Use the links below to contribute with new tools or get in touch.
DesignLAB talks
DesignLAB talks
Design of/for Futures
Invited speaker: Ramia Maze
Professor of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability, UAL
Given the contemporary “design turn,” in which many disciplines and societal sectors are turning towards design, there are stakes in design scholarship beyond the design discipline itself. Disciplines including futures studies and political science are turning towards design, as are communities, companies, civil society organizations and governments seeking more applied, accessible, tangible and creative ways to change themselves and others. What is at stake in this design turn? Besides design merely instrumentalized and ‘in service’ to other disciplines and societal sectors, there are emerging multiple and critical roles for design. In this lecture I will trace such questions and some examples, specifically in relation to the emerging fields of ‘design futures’, ‘design for climate transition’, and ‘design for policy’.
Participative Discussion.
When: Wednesday 21 Mar 2025 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Location: Arts Tower, Room 13.19
Website Launch and Talk
Website Launch and Talk
We are pleased to invite you to the DesignLAB Website Launch, featuring the Design Tools Library - a repository of tools and projects that activate design thinking as an ontological ground for transdisciplinary research and scholarship.
This platform serves as a knowledge base to support training and collaboration across the School of Architecture and Landscape and within the Faculty of Social Sciences.
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Invited speaker: Prof. Davide Fassi,
Unlocking potential: Insights from POLIMI DESIS Lab and the
DESIS Network
Prof. Davide Fassi is the coordinator of the Polimi DESIS Lab, a research lab on design for social innovation and sustainability at the Politecnico di Milano, and member of the DESIS network.
When: Wednesday 26 Mar 2025 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Location: Arts Tower, Room 13.19
> Website Launch and Talk: Speaker Davide Fassi, Insights from POLIMI DESIS Lab and the DESIS network
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