This year has revealed that designers must confront reality and uphold their political commitments to drive meaningful change by embracing radical hope.

written by Agnès Patuano (WUR)

written by Clemens Driessen (WUR)

written by Tilman Dingler (TU Delft), Tuan Huang (TU/e)

written by Wilbert Tabone (TU Delft), Sharvari Bondre (TU/e), and Bas Meester (WUR)

written by Carmen Heuvelmans (UTwente), Marthe Derkzen (WUR), Karin Bogdanova (TU Delft)

written by Jodi Sturge (UTwente), Juliette van Haren (TU/e), Marjolein Derks (WUR)

written by Amina Chouairi (WUR), Ana Bóia Cação (TU/e), Jairo da Costa Junior (UTwente), Rebekka Groeneveld (TU Delft)

During his keynote at Dutch Design Week on October 20th, Dutch writer Tommy Wieringa delivered an essay exploring his notion of optimism without hope, directed at the design and design research community, who find themselves committed to driving change amid multiple, entangled ecological, social, and political crises. This year’s 4TU.Design United 2025 theme, “Less Hope, More Action!” echoes Wieringa’s call.

For a long time, economics was dominated by the idea that greater prosperity would automatically lead to greater happiness: if we become richer, we can consume more, and that would ultimately make us happier. Yet countless studies now show that the growing prosperity in the West over the past decades has hardly led to more happiness. This is not only due to rising inequality, but also to the way we achieve growth: often at the expense of other things crucial for a good life, such as social relationships, the quality of work, and a healthy living environment.

I write from the middle—the in-between space of the asterisks where hope-meets-action. Here in dialouge with the 4TU Design United’s DDW25 showcase, I find myself reflecting on what is conjured by ‘crisis’: ecological crisis, housing crisis, crisis of the imagination or the polycrisis not as an abstract theme to be designed out of, but as a lived condition. Hope in this context may be a necessary embodied practice for acting-with-hope, in the face of what José Muñoz has called, an often heartbreaking reality. 

What do you think of, when you think of a better future?

Popular media and games in particular are increasingly gaining attention for their potential to shape sustainable future imaginaries and engage players and player communities with environmental concerns. Both digital and analogue entertainment games are increasingly designed to reflect environmental sensibilities; for example, video games like Beecarbonize (2023) and Terra Nil (both 2023) allow players to explore planet, while board games like Daybreak (2023) require players to cooperate to formulate global climate policies and improve their countries’ ecological and societal resilience. 

Dr. Sage Cammers-Goodwin

Design is the means by which we consciously change our environment, affecting not only our engagement with the world, but also that of other beings who, consciously or not, also shape the world we live in. The rational nature of design can cause us to adopt an abstract and aseptic view of the world, causing us to forget the ecological nature of our existence. To cope with the world's complexity, humans have developed sophisticated abstract models. These models have shaped the technological systems that have allowed us to become hybrid beings who now exist in both a modeled, complex physical world and a complex, model-based virtual realm. How are we adapting to this new environmental awareness? Do we understand the world we inhabit?

The creation of living environments that nurture both human and ecological health is gaining momentum in design. This pursuit requires the convergence of diverse design disciplines and methods, each bringing unique insights and expertise. The Living Environment Theme is led by a human-building interaction designer (Jodi Sturge, UT), an agricultural designer (Marjolein Derks, WUR), an industrial designer focusing on planetary health (Juliette van Haren, TU/e) and a practice-based fabrication designer (Eliza Noordhoek, TUD). The varied perspectives on what shapes a living environment led to fruitful discussions on the importance of capabilities and diversity in designing sustainable and enriching living environments. Based on these discussions, we selected five projects for the Living Environment theme. Together, they have crafted a vision for living environments that are not only sustainable but also healing.

What is a thriving planet? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines thriving as characterized by success or prosperity and, ironically, gives the capitalist example of a thriving business. Elon Musk might say we already have a thriving planet.

Nazli Cila

Milene Gonçalves (TUD), Armagan Karahanoglu (UT), Jesse Joshua Benjamin (TU/e), Vera van den Burg (TUD) Associate Chair 3: Wilbert Tabone (TUD)

Francesca Toso (UT), Sebastian Cmentowski (TU/e), Eric Gu (TUD), Roberta Antognini (UT), Erik van der Spek (TU/e)

Maarten Houben (TU/e),  Eda Karaosmanoglu (TUD), Siyuan Huang (UT), Zhuochao Peng (TUD), Govert Flint (TUD)

As societies continue to grow beyond planetary limits, we enter uncharted territory that demands new ways of thinking and acting. Can design help reverse course, moving beyond growth-driven models and short-term fixes towards a future where human and planetary wellbeing are aligned? This is the question we aim to explore in this year’s Thriving Planet theme track.

Interspecies Library is an independent archive dedicated to the curation of contemporary artists’ books exploring interspecies futures: the manifold unseen and potential relationships that flourish among different lifeforms. A wide variety of printed materials are housed in the archive, including books, pamphlets, zines, posters, ephemera, and other artifacts, which are sourced from artists and independent publishers around the world.

Together, academic design research and design education form the foundations of our design discipline. Much has been discussed about design research and its relationship with, and impact on, design practice. As a design academic who transitioned into design practice for nearly a decade and is now active in healthcare, I believe this year’s exhibition, cases, and design debates can benefit from a traditional design critique.

Design is a way of speculating about how things could be: it's about imagining possible futures. This, famously, is what is advocated by the pioneers of Speculative Design, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. I dare to say that it's imperative for designers to always, in some way, use design to envision and experiment with our desirable futures. They need to ask and find answers for the questions of what it is that our future needs; how do we want to live, and what do we find important in our lives. And consequently, what do I, as a designer, design, why, and for whom?

Designing for the future has an allure - why design for the way things are now when we can be bold, experiment with, and paint pictures of worlds just on the verge of becoming? There's a thrill to making something new, probing the edges of possibility by asking not "How might we?" but "What might be?". So, why is this important? The things we work with are more fluid, more interconnected, and more continuously in flux than ever before. The purpose of technologies is only figured out after they've been made and released: mobile phones are only useful for the ecosystem of services and interactions that spring up around them; the capabilities of new AI systems are only discovered through investigation, often in public, as communities experiment to see what's possible - "does it do this?". At the same time, we can recognise that the value of design is not only in making better systems but in investigating the possible worlds that might be made. This is what Pierce would call 'frictional' design: accelerating current trends, exploring counterfactuals, creating space to imagine how the world might be different, and shaping the direction of travel.

A ritual central to science is the PhD defence. At Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands, this ceremony unfolds in an ornate auditorium where stained glass windows cast coloured light onto centuries-old wood panels. Then picture a procession of senior scholars, each adorned in black robes and peculiar hats as if plucked from a medieval painting.

What makes people truly happy? This question has gained new significance in a world that’s rethinking the limits of materialism. As economic expansion continues to raise social and environmental concerns, designers are looking for a deeper sense of purpose. Many have embraced a modern form of humanism as a guide to creating designs that foster human capabilities. This philosophy, rooted in Socratic thought, advanced by Abraham Maslow, and reinvigorated by the positive psychology movement, adapts a holistic view on human existence, emphasizing the potential for human self-actualization—the flourishing of individuals and communities.

Doenja Oogjes

The idea of 'becoming ' is essential. We need to open up the meaning of the identity concept towards relations with a multiplicity, with others. Through opposition to the idea of identity as something completely closed, already formed, and static. We are subjects under construction; we are always becoming something. Rosy Braidotti, 2019, CCCBLAB (Dossier, Post-humanism)

“Design refusal” is an emerging movement in design research and practice that places social justice at the centre of design processes. It raises broader questions about the limits of co-creation and public participation in design. Design refusal has largely foregrounded the responsibility and agency of designers and engineers to disrupt potentially harmful projects within powerful institutions. One key example of design refusal is the collective action of software engineers at Google, where they mobilised against collaboration with the US military (Robinson et al., 2024). Although these acts of refusal offer important lessons, design scholars highlight how focusing on refusal within powerful institutions creates a flawed theory of change which relies on “the goodwill of elites, rather than supporting people’s agency to shape their relationships to data regimes” (Zong and Matias, 2024: 2).

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Changing Gears

Design is inherently a future-oriented practice. But how can we envision desirable futures on a troubled planet? Does society have a "crisis of imagination"? And if so, can designers help us both speculate about practices of tomorrow, and inspire us to take action? Climate Futures Now! brings together projects from the 4TU community, via the Design United Expo and an afternoon Dialogues session at DDW23.