Conference Agenda

In recent years, Transition Design and Systemic Design have both emerged as prominent design-led responses to complex, interconnected societal challenges such as climate change, social inequality, and long-term sustainability transitions (Irwin, 2015; Jones & Van Ael, 2022). Both foreground systems thinking, multi-scalar intervention, and the need for design for systems change (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016). As a result, the two are increasingly referenced together in research, education, and practice.

This conversation proposes an open, collective inquiry into the boundaries, tensions, and field-level implications of Transition Design and Systemic Design. By assembling conveyors and participants from diverse institutions and geographies who bring a multitude of perspectives together from research, education, and practice, the session aims to surface shared foundations, productive frictions, and unresolved questions within and between Systemic Design and Transition Design. In doing so, this conversation seeks to contribute to a more explicit articulation of how these approaches can strengthen design’s future capacity for systemic change, and to identify directions for further research, theory-building, pedagogy, and practice.