Design for Balance: Reimagining Processes and Competences for Sustainable Futures

Design for Balance stimulates the reimagination of our productive, technological, societal and cultural systems, moving away from compensation strategies, which focus on balancing their negative impacts, towards embracing systemic change, which focuses on establishing new balance within their components. Design principles, processes and competencies have contributed significantly to the current simplistic idea of facing sustainability through compensation strategies (e.g., tree replanting to offset carbon emissions). Imagining how design can shift towards reaching a systemic “balance” prompts challenging questions: Which design principles could inform this new paradigm of balance? Which design processes could enable its growth? Which diverse knowledge and competencies are required to design for embracing it? The track reflects on the evolution of design practices, processes and related competencies. The papers selected for this track address both the current gaps and limitations of design but also how the discipline can be reimagined through redefining principles, body of knowledge and systems of competencies.