What are the best ways to integrate sustainability into design education?

Sustainability can easily become a buzz word that students think they understand. By tailoring curriculum to include sustainability criteria and encouraging students to explore that criteria in an individual manner, design teachers can remove the buzz from the word and make it authentic instead.

Sustainability applied to design, in my opinion, is defined in the paradigm of what is deontologically acceptable according to a global vision within the world of design. Therefore, as far as education is concerned, this concept of sustainability should be defined by those parameters that, not only in teaching but also in practice, enable students to discern between what is deontologically acceptable and what is not. Teaching how to apply the concept of sustainability in the optimisation of resources, the management of the design company to make it viable or simply to design in a way that is more respectful of environmental processes would form part of sustainable design education, which is not the same as sustainable design education.

Transforming design education for sustainability necessitates a dynamic strategy, focusing on systems thinking. For example, students dissecting urban transportation systems can examine how interconnected elements impact environmental and social outcomes. By prioritizing systems thinking, they don't just design a product, but envision its entire lifecycle. Through systems thinking, it's possible to assess the social, economic, and environmental dynamics at play, fostering a deeper understanding of sustainable design. This approach allows to pinpoint crucial leverage points, ensuring that designs drive impactful and lasting change.

To teach designers to walk through observing nature is an essential part of helping visualise complex systems, impact of interactions on the planet, consumption behaviours, care& efforts to understand human ability to nurture & renew, admire& be inspired rather than destruct. All other aspects of system (food water shelter machine needs) with understanding (in context of earth based knowledge)will help human brain leverage its higher thinking evolved ability to sustain healthy systems without destructive, power wielding, monopolistic (only urban human ) agendas.

Designing about the system is the executive part of understanding the design process as a whole, and not as the sum of isolated parts. From the reading of the brief to its formal response, passing through the understanding of each of the realities inherent to the assignment, designing the system is precisely the only way of designing, understanding good design as designing. Teaching to understand the system and making the average student value the process over the result will ensure that, in the not too distant future, design will prevail over augmented realities, artificial intelligences and, above all, over clients and organisations that are not versed in the practice of design.

All human action in society is political. Design does not cease to be so, and that is why all designed action must be aware of the environment and surroundings that surround it. Not only in practice, but also in education, everything that is thought under a design prism must be transparent with the author's intention. Thus, design must represent, from an ethical point of view, a set of values in accordance with those who make it and those who receive it.

Innovation being one of the essential parts of creativity, it must not fail to be concise and orderly in conveying a message or intention. Innovation must be present in every design project, but in my opinion it does not necessarily have to be present in the formalisation, in the final result of the project, but in the process. An innovative process will normally achieve an equally innovative result. An innovative result can come from a linear process in which there is no innovation. I value the process part much more because, as I said before, it is what will differentiate us from the machines.