SiDE Symposium
TU Delft 2025
TU Delft 2025
What Was Sustainability?
The Past, Present, and Future of Sustainability in Design and its Education
The Past, Present, and Future of Sustainability in Design and its Education
A two-day symposium
March 26-27, 2025 at IDE, TU Delft
Organised by Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology in collaboration with IIT Delhi
March 26-27, 2025 at IDE, TU Delft
Organised by Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology in collaboration with IIT Delhi
Introduction
The symposium, “What Was Sustainability?: The Past, Present, and Future of Sustainability in Design and its Education,” March 26-27, 2025 at the Delft University of Technology, will bring together educators and researchers to explore sustainability, as a concept and set of practices, in design and design education. The symposium will focus in part on the experience of TU Delft, with the goal of contextualizing that within larger narratives of Dutch, European, and global design education, as well as of sustainability beyond design. This is a collaboration with IIT Delhi and a counterpart to the SiDE Symposium there in January (see above).
Keynote Speakers
Prof. JC Diehl
TU Delft
Wed. 26 March
9:15-10:00 at IDE Arena
The Evolution of Design for Sustainability (DfS) at IDE: From Ecodesign to Design for Transitions
Abstract to come.
Prof. Peter van Dam
University of Amsterdam
Wed. 26 March
13:30-14:30 at IDE Arena
A Practical Utopia: The Rise and Rise of Sustainability
How have we come to love sustainability? This lecture examines how a new approach to sustainability emerged since the 1950s in response to the mounting problems of industrialization and mass consumption. Sustainability subsumed new ways of viewing the world: thinking in terms of interdependence, striving for balance between economic, social, and environmental concerns, and fostering belief in the possibility of achieving this balance through scientific knowledge and transnational governance. Yet sustainability has never been primarily an abstract idea. Our understanding of sustainability has evolved largely through practices. It combined a paradoxical range of practical approaches: the simultaneous embrace of "grand" global thinking alongside a return to small-scale, localized solutions. This lecture will explore how advocates of different sustainability models have operated at the intersection of idealistic visions and practical implementations. An understanding of the concurrent varieties of sustainability helps explain its current popularity, the pitfalls it faces, and the opportunities it offers.
Prof. Kjetil Fallan
University of Oslo
Thurs. 27 March
13:30-14:30 at IDE Arena
Ideology & Methodology: A History of Ecological Design in an Educational Setting
Increased attention to ecology and environmental problems is a prominent aspect of the transformation of design cultures in the 1960s and 1970s. In this talk, I will argue that a key characteristic of this formation was the close and reciprocal interrelations between ideology and methodology, as practitioners, critics, educators, students, and activists awoken by the ecological crisis struggled to find new answers to the questions of what design should be, and how it should be practiced. Examples are taken from the fields of design education and design activism, where the interaction between ideology and methodology has been especially strong. Both education and activism are ideologically charged and methodologically explicit, and therefore lend themselves to analysis of the relation between the two modes of thought. These examples demonstrate that the dynamic relation between the why and the how was integral to the shaping of ecological design.
Schedule of Events
Speakers
Session A
Damian White
The Rhode Island School of Design , USA
Planetary Designs and Speculative Climate Design Futures
Dr. Taryn Mead
IE University - Segovia
Spain
Technocentric Sustainability and the Digitized Designer: Recentering Design Education as an Embodied and Relational Endeavor
Prof. Sven Quadflieg
Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences
Germany
The Unbearable Lightness of Designing* (Online)
Dr. Sharon Prendeville
Loughborough University, UK
What Comes after Regenerative Design?* (Online)
Session B & C
Sam Bennett
Technology University of Eindhoven, Netherlands
The Friction of Reintegrating Slowness, Care, and Attention into the Contemporary Classroom through Mending
Prof. Pramod Khadilkar
Department of Design
IIT Delhi, India
Economic Sustainability
Dr. Michael Stead
Lancaster University,
UK
Reimagining Design Education to Engender Sustainable and Inclusive Futures: Developing More-than-Human Design Pedagogy
Prof. Vijay Chariar
Centre for Rural Development and Technology
IIT Delhi, India
Sustainability
Session D
Prof. Fernando Secomandi
TU Delft
Netherlands
Design for Our Future… with GenAI?
Prof Jeremy Faludi
TU Delft
Netherlands
Sustainability in the Future of Design Education
Nitya Sankhe
Rhode Island School of Design, USA
Whose Future? Rethinking Climate Change Pedagogy for Indigenous Communities
Prof. Natalie Weinmann
Coburg University,
Germany
Design Strategies for a Sustainable Future: A Model for Transdisciplinary Sustainability Education in Design
Organisers
Dr. Samuel Franklin
Industrial Design Engineering
TU Delft
Design History
Prof. Saurabh Tewari
Design
IIT Delhi
Communication Design
Design History
Symposium Venue: TU Delft
Symposium Venue
TU Delft
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
TU Delft
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, Netherlands