Design for Circularity Workshop

日本語

Content

1. Aim of the workshop

2. The Design Brief

3. Partnership with colourloop Co., Ltd.

The Design for Circularity Workshop is a 4-day workshop introducing participants to the Circular Economy (CE) and circular design. After a short lecture on the basic workings of the CE, participants engage in a hands-on design brief that focuses on one circular strategy.

Design for Circularity is organized by Studio A-lot-of-things (Emma Huffman & Danika van Kaathoven). The 2022 sessions of Design for Circularity were supported by colourloop Co., Ltd.

1. Aim of the workshop

Our workshop is created as an introduction to design for a circular economy with in mind people eager to take on circularity in their practice. The workshop starts with a lecture on the circular economy and focused on design for disassembly and closing the resource loop for the hands-on workshop brief. We chose the workshop format as an educational and participatory research method to explore circular design. A holistic approach towards the circular economy also involves teaching future design practitioners how to operate within a circular system. A workshop can serve as an appropriate platform to interlace theories and practices and opens up an opportunity to collaborate, improvise and play. This can offer valuable insights into the possibilities of circularity, while simultaneously educating students and future designers on how to make their work more sustainable.

In March 2022 we carried out the first edition of the Design for Circularity workshop with 5 undergraduates studying Design at Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) to introduce them to Circular Design Thinking and offer a platform to practice circular design. In May 2022, an updated 2.0 version of the workshop was held. This time the participants included both undergraduate and graduate students from the Design department at KIT. During both workshops, the participants actively engaged in the circular design strategy Designing for Disassembly (DfD).

2. The Design Brief

Create your own Design for Disassembly for a one-day home

The workshop proposes a concept to practice designing for closing the resource loop. Within this concept, we combined the DfD strategy with a business model revolving around resource collection, thereby aiming to close the gap that often occurs when reaching the after-use phase.

A prop was connected to the brief: the flatpack. We designed our flatpack to fit the size of an existing service of the Japanese postal service, known as the Letter Pack. This is a service with which packages of A4 size up to 4kg (including correspondence) can be sent throughout Japan at a flat rate. As the Letter Pack is a well-known service in Japan, we chose this service as a reference to add a realistic and relatable element to the design brief for the workshop participants.

We crafted a simple narrative for the participants to work with: “Designing for Disassembly” to fill a temporary space (a one-day home). The students were free in deciding what to create for this space, as long as the design could be disassembled to fit the provided flatpack. Design ideas could for example enable an easy move to a next home, or to a recycling company to facilitate resource reuse. We connected the DfD strategy and the concept of a take-back scheme revolving around the “flatpack service” to fit the circular concept to stimulate easy return for recycling, and to encourage the participants to think about the after-use phase of their designs.

◄ Illustration of the various touchpoints within a circular system. The flow of the workshop (green) covers the touchpoints indicated by the blue line.

The rules of the workshop:

Participants should be able to disassemble their design, and fit it in the flatpack we provided or any other existing container that the Japanese postal service provides as part of their service
The design can be a product, service or anything in between - as long as it fits the scope of circularity

We wanted to stimulate the students’ creativity by giving them as much freedom in their design process as possible. They were free to use any other material besides the main materials provided by colourloop, and apply any technique to realize their final outcome. We provided other materials such as wood, paper and cloth for prototyping, and students were allowed to bring their own. We did not purchase anything new for this workshop; all materials were already in our possession, collected over the years and waiting to be used.

3. Partnership with colourloop Co., Ltd.

The main material that the students worked with during the workshop was provided by colourloop Co., Ltd., (colourloop) a Japanese venture company specializing in recycling textile and fiber waste. In Japan, the annual waste of clothing is around 1.4 million tonnes, much of it destined for landfill or incineration as recycling rates are low. This is due to the difficulty of material recycling; materials are mixed when spinning, weaving and knitting. In response to these problems, colourloop has developed the “Colour Recycle System”, a system that sorts discarded fibres based on colour, rather than material, and transforms them into new attractive materials.

The new system, which enables waste fibres to be remade into colourful olefin sheets, colourloop’s “Waste Fiber Reinforced Plastic Sheet’’ [“WFRP Sheet”], requires the development of a wider range of applications beyond that of traditional recycled material from waste fibres.

At the end of a previous research project “Fabric Re-engineered as Products” done in 2021 with colourloop at KYOTO Design Lab (D-lab), three boxes of (scrap) material were leftover that had the potential to be used. This was the trigger for us to come up with the “Design for Circularity” workshop format. While thinking about the possible flow of the workshop with colourloop’s materials, we started discussing a future concept for colourloop to match the company’s ability to recycle their sheet materials with a possible take-back service. colourloop has developed a circular strategy to turn fabric waste into a valuable resource again, yet is currently lacking a fully circular business model for their own recycled products to return to the cycle of resources. Our workshop format was therefore an opportunity to explore and practice with service concepts.

The collaboration with colourloop works as a beneficial two-way street; for the students, the company shows a clear industry example active in circularity, while for colourloop, creating new relationships for future collaborations and possible business endeavours.

4. Program overview

We planned a 4-day workshop as an active learning environment to study and discuss circularity. To offer a holistic educational tool, we developed a program that includes a detailed introduction to circular theories and elaborate sessions for material research and prototyping. More details and visuals on each day can be found in the Daily Reports on the Workshop.

The following segments shows the program overview and the activities of workshop 1.0 and the updated workshop 2.0. Click on the buttons below to see the content details.

Design for Circularity Workshop 1.0

Design for Circularity Workshop 2.0

5. Research approach

Data was gathered through group talks with the participants throughout the workshop and via questionnaires at the end of the workshop. In addition, we asked the participants to keep track of their design process in a digital logbook. The logbooks were a tool to collect additional insights into the thoughts on concept creation and prototyping processes of the participants. We also collected data through internal discussions and wrote down our observations in short reports at the end of each day. During workshop 2.0, we included daily group talks with the participants to our data collection methods. The resulting data outputs were written materials, photos, and videos. The focus was on getting insights into how participants dealt with circularity in practice; their understanding of the circular economy and circular design throughout the workshop activities, as well as the challenges they faced while engaging in circularity. Before the final exercise of disassembly on day 4, all prototypes that the participants made were photographed and examined. The focus of the examination was on assessing the effectiveness of the workshop activities by reflecting on how the prototypes fit the scope of circularity. Since the design brief of this workshop was initially directed toward design for disassembly, this design strategy was leading in most of the prototypes. Besides design for disassembly, a few participants explored other circular product design strategies, such as zero waste pattern making to eliminate the generation of waste in the making process. One of the major differences between workshop 1.0 and workshop 2.0 was the time schedule in which the workshops were held. This influenced the way the data collection was conducted. Because the workshop days of version 2.0 were divided over two weekends, as opposed to the four consecutive days during workshop 1.0, the digital logbooks were more intensively used to keep track of the participant's progress during the weekdays in between since the organizers could not always be present.

6. Results

The workshop gave the participants with little prior knowledge of the CE and circular design an opportunity to gain experience in circular design through practice and “trial and error” with the colourloop materials at hand. It has been a good platform for collaboration and sharing ideas with fellow designers and people viewing their works. A few participants also mentioned that the “Circular Flow Map” exercise was a valuable addition to gaining awareness of “how people and goods flow” and organising their thoughts on achieving a holistic circular design.

Joining “Design for Circularity” has sparked the participants’ attention on several details of circular product design and circular services, as one participant mentioned the importance of not only connecting the touchpoints in a circular system (through service) but also paying attention to “the frequency with which the cycles rotated”.

Participants reflected on their newly gained perspectives on the designer’s role shifting from “simply designing things to designing society”. There is a need for designers to have a holistic view of society, business, and values. It is important to not only keep an eye on the product itself, but also gain an understanding of the whole cycle it is a part of, built together with other stakeholders, users, and makers. It is the designer’s responsibility to carefully consider how their creations circulate, “from the materials to the production process and after use”. After the workshop, many participants expressed their ambitions to continue their learning about circularity to use in future activities. Several themes within the scope of the circular economy were mentioned for further exploration in their personal design processes, such as design for recycling, reuse, zero waste design, service design, social design, and transportation design.

The road to circularity can be considered a complex journey, perhaps even discouraging at times. But, as one of the participants optimistically has pointed out, being aware of environmental impacts and cycles is not a hindrance to ideas, but a catalyst for new ones.

7. Conclusion

The Design for Circularity workshop is a promising platform for design students and practitioners to promote active learning about the circular economy and to put circular strategies into practice. The workshop has shown an accessible way to introduce circular design by aiming the attention of the design process on one specific design strategy. As for editions 1.0 and 2.0 of the workshop format, participants actively engaged in specific challenges of Designing for Disassembly. We argue that starting from one particular circular context can function as a stepping stone to a comprehensible view of the CE.

The Circular Flow Map exercise encourages reflection on circular business models, material alternatives, and lifecycle considerations. Complementing the main prototyping with this visualisation exercise enables the participants to keep a holistic perspective on how their product designs and service concepts could be positioned in the framework of the circular economy.

For the CE to thrive, it is vital to enable collaboration with (local) stakeholders and stimulate co-creation early in the design process. However, the perception of the CE being highly conceptual and theoretical, along with the lack of information on how the CE can be implemented in practice, are interfering in the transition to a circular system. The way that the “Design for Circularity” workshop combines theory and practice has shown a type of format that could become a valuable addition to the current learning environment on circularity for various educational levels as well as a learning tool on a business scale. We created an environment to bring together designers and companies with circular capabilities and ambitions to join forces working towards a closed loop of products and materials. The workshop forms the setting for active debate, where designers engage in a “design scenario” based on a company’s circular competence. In the case of both pilot workshops 1.0 and 2.0, the scenario was built around colourloop’s recycled material. Participants got insights into the workings of circularity in business and materiality, and were able to engage in a hands-on exploration of colourloop’s WFRP Sheet material, playfully testing the material characteristics in various ways. At the end of the workshop, the participants presented their circular product prototypes and service concepts. Working with a design scenario could be a way to see past theories and go more into detail on actual needs and relevant applications for circular methods. The scenario acts as a guiding tool for prototyping, opening up the dialogue to trigger (even better) idea generation.

8. Future steps

Overall the “Design for Circularity” workshop has been a rather fruitful experience so far. Designing for the CE is often considered a complex affair, due to the involvement of many circular methods, theories, and stakeholders. Although the participants started with little prior knowledge of the circular economy and circular design, they were able to process the large amount of information well. The concepts that the participants came up with together for the space and the products that they made with colourloop’s recycled materials showed a nicely balanced interpretation of what they had learned during the workshop. For many participants, the workshop has been a valuable experience in their learning of design, and a stimulant for deepening their understanding of the CE to enhance their future design practices.

To turn our workshop format into a standard learning tool, a multitude of additional research and data is needed. Close observations and the feedback from the participants have given us valuable insights into how we can improve our workshop format for it to become a holistic and practical guide to designing for circularity. The first goal is to build a learning tool for bachelor students and other first-time learners to introduce them to the basic workings of the circular economy and circular design. In the course of this process we will also map out options for Master student level versions of the workshop; by zooming in on more specific themes and specializations within circular design.

Design for Circularity Workshop 1.0

Design for Circularity Workshop 2.0

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