What is sustainist design?

Everyone is a designer

Part of: About

Sustainist Design connects social and ecological sustainability. Although it may include eco-design, sustainist design is as much concerned with connectivity, local values, and community as drivers of social innovation. From communities willing to shape their living environment collaboratively, to companies aiming for meaningful and conscious solutions for their businesses. Sustainist design is valuable for everyone!

Values

The way we live, consume, and produce is changing. Our view is that shifting (cultural) values worldwide will inform nowadays design challenges. Looking at design through this lens of a new culture –sustainism, as we call it– highlights social-ecological qualities* as: connectedness, sharing, localism and proportionality.

 

Co-design

Sustainist Design Practice aims to help both designers and non-designers develop and implement meaningful projects aligned with current sociocultural contexts. Our platform, tools, training and shared processes help you to design for social and sustainable innovation. This includes co-creating strong relationships and networks within local contexts, realising projects with shared responsibility.

By collaborative design approaches from local perspectives, we aim to design for a more social and inclusive living environment. We do this by consciously incorporating societal / cultural values into the design process:

less is more > do more with less
objects > connections
centralised > networked
form follows function > form follows meaning
hierarchical > bottom-up
linear > circulair
efficient > effective
autonomous > interdependent
globalised > place-based
nature as a source > nature as a resource