About TZU DESIS Lab.

DESIS is an acronym for Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability. It is a global network connecting design universities around the world, initiated in 2009 by Ezio Manzini (Professor Emeritus at Politecnico di Milano).

TZU DESIS Lab. was the first DESIS Lab established in Japan. It was founded in 2011 at Tokyo Zokei University under the leadership of Professor Fumikazu Masuda (then Professor of the Sustainable Project and Industrial Design Program). Tokyo Zokei University upholds the founding principle of “the exploration and practice of creative activities that shape society.” Within this framework, TZU DESIS Lab. reinterprets the role of art and design as creative practices for building a sustainable society, and engages in both research and practice toward that goal.

Located in a forested satoyama environment, Tokyo Zokei University is a uniquely situated art and design institution in Japan. The lab regards the university’s forest as a living experimental field for exploring and envisioning sustainable societies and lifestyles. Through this setting, students, faculty, and local community members come together to collaborate on experimental projects.

Contemporary society is facing a “ecological rift.”

Through labor and science and technology, we act upon nature to extract resources and process them into goods and energy—such as housing, clothing, and food—that satisfy our needs and desires. By consuming these products, we reproduce our daily lives. At the same time, however, we continuously discharge various forms of waste, including garbage and greenhouse gases, into nature as an external sink.

By overexploiting nature, emitting waste beyond what natural systems can absorb, and releasing substances that cannot be assimilated at all, we have generated environmental crises such as marine plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change. We are already experiencing their impacts in many ways. Under capitalism, our socio-economic activities continue to expand, deepening the rift between humans and nature.

Under capitalism, large-scale circulation of resources becomes an opportunity for further economic growth

Circular design has been gaining attention as a way to bridge the “ecological rift.” It is grounded in the idea of decoupling—the belief that, by establishing systems of resource circulation, the economy can continue to grow without concern for the ecological impacts of production and consumption. If waste is recirculated as a resource rather than sent to landfills or incineration, it is indeed possible to reduce waste, lessen the extraction of natural resources, and decrease pressure on ecosystems.

What must not be overlooked, however, is that economic growth itself drives further increases in resource demand, ultimately leading to greater exploitation of nature. While global population growth is one factor behind this expansion, a more significant driver lies in the spread of an “imperial mode of living” characterized by excessive resource consumption in high-income countries such as Japan and those in Europe and North America, as well as the diffusion of this lifestyle to the Global South. The “imperial mode of living” refers to what is often considered an ordinary way of life in these regions—one that secures comfort, stability, and pleasure by appropriating resources from elsewhere, generating harsh labor conditions not only for humans but also for animals such as livestock, and contributing to environmental degradation.

The expansion of this resource-intensive way of living—one that consumes more than is necessary for survival—acts as a key engine of economic growth. Yet, as illustrated by the Jevons paradox, even as technological innovation improves resource productivity and efficiency, total resource consumption does not decrease; it often increases. This reveals how, under capitalism, scientific and technological innovation tends to be harnessed to expand production and sustain the imperial mode of living.

As a result, the growth-driven increase in resource demand effectively cancels out the environmental benefits of technological solutions such as dematerialization through service-based economies or the development of new materials. Consequently, resource circulation can only address a portion of total resource demand, rather than resolving the problem as a whole.

Even if large-scale systems of resource circulation are developed faster than the growth in resource demand, the effectiveness of resource circulation still has its limits

Moreover, maintaining the quality of resources through repeated cycles of circulation requires significant amounts of energy and cost. Even if materials are continually recirculated, the law of increasing entropy ultimately leads to their degradation, turning them into waste. In addition, it is impossible to create a perfectly closed-loop system. As a result, even if large-scale resource circulation is achieved, continued economic growth will increase resource demand and intensify the exploitation of nature, making it impossible to avoid destructive impacts on ecosystems.

Under capitalism, where economic growth itself is treated as the ultimate goal, circular design does not “transform” growth but rather functions as an additional driver of further growth. Consequently, it increases resource demand, limiting its potential to reduce environmental burdens and making it difficult to prevent ecological collapse.

Looking ahead, as demand for food and energy resources rises due to population growth and the expansion of the imperial mode of living, resource circulation alone will not be sufficient to address global environmental challenges. In other words, simply “greening” capitalist production—through practices such as eco-design or circular design aimed at capital accumulation and profit generation—is not enough.

Furthermore, according to the writer Shu Yamaguchi, if the global economy were to grow at an annual rate of 4%, it would become 49 times larger in 100 years, approximately 129,000 times larger in 300 years, and about 10 quadrillion (10^16) times larger in 1,000 years. The very idea that technological innovation can solve environmental problems, overcome the limits to growth, and sustain compound economic growth—doubling the size of the economy every 25 years—is, in the end, nothing more than an unscientific fantasy.

Exploration and practice of creative formative activities that create a sustainable society

TZU DESIS Lab. believes that the mission of design is to envision and implement entirely new forms of society and civilization as alternatives to today’s unsustainable world. To this end, the lab explores and designs sustainable societies and lifestyles grounded in localized production through the exploration and practice of creative formative activities.

The forest (satoyama) surrounding Tokyo Zokei University was once a commons that supported the reproduction of local livelihoods. The broader area, including the university, is said to have been a site of production for Sue ware pottery, as well as iron tools such as farming implements and weapons, wooden utensils like plates and bowls, and even horse breeding. By the end of the Heian period and into the Kamakura period, however, the influx of domestically produced ceramics and imported porcelain from China led to a decline in Sue ware production. From the Kamakura period through to the modern era, the deciduous broadleaf forests around the university continued to be used modestly as satoyama by local farmers.

For example, until gas and electricity became widespread, farmers gathered firewood from these forests as a primary energy source. The ash produced from firewood—rich in alkaline calcium, potassium, and other minerals—was used as fertilizer, while fallen leaves from broadleaf trees were used to enrich the soil. Farmers also cultivated mulberry trees for sericulture as a side occupation, and grew bamboo grass for making baskets during the agricultural off-season.

With the advance of modernization, however, the use of satoyama declined. Firewood was no longer needed as an energy source, goods came to be purchased rather than made, and the use of bamboo, mulberry, and timber disappeared. As agriculture declined, or shifted toward purchased fertilizers, the use of ash and fallen leaves also faded. As a result, the cyclical use of satoyama resources was disrupted, and the forests were gradually abandoned and degraded.

At TZU DESIS Lab., we enter these neglected university forests together with students, faculty, and local residents, caring for and regenerating the forest and soil in order to restore degraded ecosystems to a healthy state. Drawing on nature’s gifts, we design useful elements for everyday life, build ecosystems that foster local circulation in collaboration with communities, and create new artifacts from these circulating resources. Starting from the values already embedded in the forest, we seek to reclaim autonomy in everyday life and to explore and propose new forms of sustainable society and lifestyles based on localized production.

Furthermore, rather than following the path of “ecological modernization”—which attempts to resolve environmental problems and the contradictions of capitalism through technological and systemic innovation in order to sustain capitalist production—we pursue more radical forms of social innovation and alternative visions of society. In doing so, we also collaborate with regions such as Thailand and Indonesia, where localized production practices are more advanced, to collectively envision new sustainable futures.

Our Projects

Wild Thoughth Project

This project draws on the concept of bricolage—proposed by the social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in his book La Pensée sauvage (The wild thought)—which refers to making do with what is at hand, assembling and creating with available materials and tools. Using this idea as a starting point, the project practices design and art that engage with and draw from nature.

Participants enter the university forest and, in collaboration with local community members, work to care for and regenerate the satoyama landscape. Through activities such as creating and expressing with materials discovered on site, the project aims to cultivate what Lévi-Strauss called “wild thought.”

Hachioji Traditional Washi Paper Project

Paper has long been used not only as a surface for writing, but also as a shared material across a wide range of design and artistic practices—including tools for everyday life, clothing, architecture, furniture, and art. Traditionally, much paper was made from locally available natural materials such as bamboo, kōzo (paper mulberry), and mulberry. However, as Western paper made from imported wood pulp came to be mass-produced in factories, these familiar natural materials gradually fell out of use. This project is based on the core concept of “making paper from materials found in our immediate surroundings.” It explores design and artistic expression that draw on natural materials available locally and within everyday environments.

Spedagi Tokyo Project

Sustainable and renewable, bamboo has long been used around the world in many aspects of everyday life—including clothing, food, housing, writing and record-keeping, paper, musical instruments, fishing tools, toys, furniture, and household items. However, as bamboo has been replaced by plastic materials, it has fallen out of use. As a result, bamboo groves in many regions have been neglected, leading to overgrowth and ecological problems.

In this project, we work to restore and manage the university’s bamboo groves—through activities such as cutting old bamboo, pruning branches, thinning stands, composting bamboo, clearing undergrowth, and marking—while exploring design practices that make use of the harvested bamboo.