İdil Gaziulusoy

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Aalto University

The paper explores the evolution of Design for Sustainability (DfS). Following a quasi-chronological pattern, our exploration provides an overview of the DfS field, categorising the design approaches developed in the past decades under four innovation levels: Product, Product-Service System, Spatio-Social and Socio-Technical System. As a result, we...

Sustainability is a system property; therefore, products/services/technologies/organisations cannot be sustainable on their own but they may be elements of sustainable systems. In addition, to achieve sustainability, there is a requirement for transformation of socio-technical systems which fulfil certain social functions such as energy, mobility a...

It is increasingly acknowledged that, in order to achieve sustainability, there is an urgent need for radical and transformative restructuring of socio-technical systems that meet our needs. These transformations are referred to as system innovations for sustainability or transitions. Transitions and system innovations cover not only product and pr...

Projects aiming to solve socially-relevant complex problems in general and sustainability related projects in particular are increasingly approached as transdisciplinary research projects. Reviewing and integrating literature and theory across a broad range of disciplines is identified as one of the main quality criteria for transdisciplinary resea...

Visioning exercises were convened in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, to explore how these cities could become low-carbon and maintain resilience over the next 25 years. Drawing on the concept of frames — in particular Schon and Rein’s conceptualisation of a frame as a “diagnostic-prescriptive story” that is based on an underlying structure of beli...

Our mainstream mobility thinking is narrowly framed: it highlights the role of mobility in economic and urban growth, individual speed and system efficiency, but obscures its role in reproducing inequalities, and in driving unsustainable developments on a global scale. Critically, however, this narrative obscures our view on the increasingly proble...

Transition Design or design for sustainability transitions is acknowledged as an emerging design research and practice area. Although studied and practiced as part of research consortiums for a while, design for transitions has only recently started to be adopted by design practitioners and consultancies with only few examples worldwide.

Addressing the current unsustainability of socio-ecological-technological systems is urgently required. Unsustainability has been associated with the anthropocentric cultures of human societies that focus on their own needs while ignoring and belittling the needs of other species and natural systems. Design, including collaborative and participator...

When a tree is also a multispecies collective, a photosynthesis process and a carbon cycle A systemic typology of natural nonhuman stakeholders when designing for sustainability Emīlija Veselova and İdil Gaziulusoy Design research and practice is increasingly aware of the sustainability crisis. Various initiatives have started to argue for a need t...

In sustainability transitions, experimentation and learning are addressed as key processes that facilitate implementation, diffusion and scaling of transition mindsets and actions. In this paper, we argue that design acts as a means for this action-based transition learning. Contributing to design for sustainability transitions literature, this pap...

This position paper presents a prototype research agenda for design for sustainability transformations (DfST) in the (post-)pandemic context. COVID-19 has made visible vulnerabilities, structural dysfunctions, inequalities and injustices across health, environmental, social, economic, provisional and political systems. In response to the crisis, ra...

It is critical now that we direct all our efforts at transitions to post-carbon and sustainable futures. Currently, transitions are mostly handled by select expert groups who generate transition visions, scenarios and pathways, feed their findings into policy-making processes, thereby locking-in “futures” on behalf of the wider public. Scholars fro...

This paper examines the integration potential of three bodies of knowledge that theorise and strategise about sustainability transitions and societal change: design for sustainability transitions (DfST), transitions theories (TTs) and practice theory (PT). After presenting an overview of their particular conceptions of change, narratives of change...

The nascent research on parenting and climate change has primarily put emphasis on parental responsibilities and provided advice for parents. However, so far, the parental perspective has been minimally studied and how parents themselves experience raising children in climate change times is yet to be explored. This article presents a preliminary u...

This book discusses the most significant ways in which design has been applied to sustainability challenges using an evolutionary perspective. It puts forward an innovation framework that is capable of coherently integrating multiple design for sustainability (DfS) approaches developed so far. It is now widely understood that design can and must pl...

Sustainability transitions have formed a vast body of literature on theory and practice of transforming socio-technical systems to achieve sustainability over the past few decades. Lately, a new area has been emerging in the design for the sustainability field, where sustainability transitions theories are integrated with design theory, education a...

Action on climate change will require significant transformation of the urban infrastructure and living patterns of cities. This transformation will arise from the processes of decarbonising urban/city energy systems as well as disentangling carbon emissions from all the services of provision that enable urban life. Cities are complex technical-phy...

This track sought to contribute to design’s potential to shift, redirect and transform power relations to achieve sustainability. We sought to direct attention to the political potential in and politics of transition design with a focus on the many ways that power flows through the systems in which design operates. Our intention was to address, dir...

To address the current unsustainability of socio-technical-ecological systems, humanity and design should increasingly consider the needs of natural entities. This paper outlines initial considerations for nature-inclusive Collaborative and Participatory Design (C&PD) by critically questioning the approach through the perspective of a bioinclusive...

Sustainability transitions are generating comprehensive learning spaces, which yield substantial reconfigurations not only in our practices and actions, sociotechnical systems, but also in our cognitive constructs. This article tackles the agency of design in transitions, by particularly focusing on bottom-up and emergent learning processes at nich...

Design for sustainability transitions is an emerging area of research and practice which integrates and expands theories of sustainability science, design and transition management. Recently sustainability transitions have been framed as design challenges with three main dimensions: creative, technical and political (Gaziulusoy & Ryan, 2017). With...

Transitions towards sustainability need for radical and structural changes in the social, cultural and organisational dimensions in addition to technological innovations and infrastructural changes. Sustainability transitions have been a research and practice agenda for several decades. Currently, a new area in design for sustainability field is em...

The design for sustainability field has evolved considerably over the past few decades. Its early beginnings were marked by addressing single issues in isolation, with a primarily technologically optimistic predisposition and a focus on incremental product innovation. Currently, “the edge” of the field strategically deals with systemic issues in th...

To facilitate transitions in socio-technical systems, it is necessary to adopt a strategic and systemic perspective. The dynamics of socio-technical systems are associated with uncertainty and may yield to critical problems as the systems change and may lead to adverse results without deliberate intervention. This case study research develops a new...

This document is a report on the structured discussion workshop at the EAD 2017 Design for Next (Society) conference in Rome, Italy. The workshop was hosted by Bianca Herlo and Andreas Unteidig from the Berlin University of the Arts and joined by İdil Gaziulusoy from Aalto University and Wolfgang Jonas from the University of Braunschweig.

Sustainability transitions require structural changes in society. There is a need for utilising new and established methods of futures inquiry. This paper presents how design visioning has been used to initiate, stimulate and shift stakeholder conversations in the Visions and Pathways 2040 project which aimed to develop innovation strategies and po...

Sustainability transitions require structural changes in society. There is a need for utilising new and established methods of futures inquiry. This paper presents how design visioning has been used to initiate, stimulate and shift stakeholder conversations in the Visions and Pathways 2040 project which aimed to develop innovation strategies and po...

Transdisciplinary research is increasingly used in projects dealing with transitions to sustainable, resilient and low-carbon societies. Transdisciplinary research projects require collaboration and coordination between researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds. Academic literature provides valuable insights on designing, facilitating, le...

The urgent need for Urban Experimentation in response to climate change. Independent of any technology used in the process, 'virtual' here speaks about evoking the critical human ability to conceptualise alternative realities, to imagine and to explore in the mind other sets of relationships (social, physical, technological) than those currently ev...

DOWNLOAD THIS ARTICLE FOR FREE AT THE JCLP SITE OR SEND AN EMAIL TO VINCENT.BLOK@WUR.NL IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE THE PDF This stream of the special volume addresses advances being made towards, and challenges for sustainable production and consumption. The article presents a variety of papers that document leading examples of recent developments in...

It is commonly accepted that, in order to achieve sustainability, there is a need for societal transformation, which requires institutional, social/cultural, organizational and technological change. This societal transformation will involve all aspects of society co-evolving toward and aligning with sustainability goals and is defined as sustainabi...

Mobile social media can be used to augment physical learning spaces and bridge formal and informal learning contexts. This paper presents the ongoing implementation and impact of a mobile social media project, which aims to augment and enhance a Product Design programme underpinned by a Design Thinking methodology. The goal of the project is to enh...

This article explores the role of future studies in developing sustainable technologies within a co-evolutionary context. In the first section, it clarifies briefly the definition of sustainable development, complexity and co-evolution, in order to establish the frame within which the theoretical exploration will be carried out. The second section...

Due to the complexity embedded in the socio-technical system and associated long planning periods, system innovation has become a research topic to remain mainly in the science and technology policies area and not much effort has been put into investigating the means of involving companies and product development teams in planning for system innova...

The overall objective of this research was to effectively link the activities/decisions at product development (micro-innovation) level in companies with the transformation which needs to take place at the societal (macro-innovation) level to achieve sustainability. The research took place in three phases. In the first phase a broad literature revi...