Designing the Circular City – Sustainist Design – Architectuur Lokaal

Pakhuis de Zwijger organizes a programme on how, from the perspective of design, we can make our cities more sustainable.

In order to become more sustainable, cities must transfer their linear scheme – make, use, waste – into a more circular system of creating a self-regulating sustainable relationship with the biosphere. Like nature, there is no waste and every organism takes and gives to the ecosystem. The aim is the creation of closed-loop processes of energy, food and natural resources. To achieve this goal we need to re-think and re-design the way we consume, produce, travel, finance and govern.

However, sustainable cities encompass more than physical flows. A city is also a living web of people, shared connections, communities and citizen initiatives. How can we build on the social energy in the city to engage in more ‘sustainist’ ways of living, working, producing and consuming? Can we co-design for sharing, connecting and local qualities?

In the morning three (international) keynote-speakers will give their views on how we can design for a circular city.

John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception and author of the book ‘Plan B, Designing in a complex world
Michiel Schwarz, Dutch cultural thinker, innovator and strategic consultant and Artist in Residence at the Amsterdam School of Arts (AHK). He is founder of Sustainism Lab en co-author of Sustainism is the New Modernism (with Joost Elffers) and the Sustainist Design Guide. Originally trained as a sociologist of technology (Ph.D., University of London).
Alastair Fuad-Luke, professor on Emerging Design Practices at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Aalto University) and author of Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World (2009).

Reactions by:
Indira van ’t Klooster, Reactivate!, A10 new European architecture, Architectuur Lokaal
Chris Roorda, Dutch Research Institute For Transitions (Drift)
Wouter Valkenier, initiator of Hanneke’s Boom and Ceuvel Volharding
Saskia Beer, Glamourmanifest

For more information click here.

Designing the Circular City is part of the Amsterdam Urban Innovation Week 2013