Sustainability in design engineering education: experiences in Northern Europe

In recent years, the implementation of sustainability into the curricula of engineering has become increasingly important. This paper focuses on the experiences of integrating sustainability in Design Engineering education in the academic bachelor programs at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, at the University College of West-Flanders in Belgium, and at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The different approaches are described and discussed. This paper aims to share insights and lessons learned in how to accomplish true integration of sustainability in bachelor course curricula of Industrial Design Engineering

Framing immigration and integration: Relationships between press and parliament in the Netherlands

This article examines how the salience and framing of political issues in the press and in parliament influence each other and how this salience and framing is influenced by key events outside the media and parliamentary realms. The case focused on is the debate on immigration and integration in the Netherlands between 1995 and 2004. The empirical analyses are based on a computer-assisted content analysis of both parliamentary documents and newspaper articles. Results show bidirectional causal relationships between media and parliament. In the case of salience only long-term influence relationships are found, while framing influences follow an interesting pattern: an increase in the use of a frame in one arena leads to an increase in the other arena only if this frame has already been used regularly in the latter arena. External events have more considerable and consistent impact on issue salience and framing in both arenas. Copyright © 2007 Sage Publications

Of chalk and cheese:behaviour change and practice theory in sustainable design

\u3cp\u3eDesign for sustainable behaviour (DfSB) is becoming increasingly influential in the areas of design research and practice. With its success, however, concerns are also rising about its limitations. This paper bundles these concerns and illustrates how DfSB approaches tend to focus on incremental savings that easily disappear in larger trends, how it risks not achieving the intended behaviour change, how its literature contains a strong rhetoric of right and wrong behaviours and how opportunities for larger scales of change tend to be missed. These concerns are illustrated using examples from the DfSB literature concerning refrigerators, electric kettles, televisions and showers. Going deeper into these limitations, the paper argues that the assumptions underlying DfSB approaches may not be the most appropriate basis for approaching the complex issue of sustainable consumption. Building on a growing number of publications in environmental policy and sustainable design, the paper then moves to explain practice theory as an alternative paradigm and argues that it shows potential to aid designers to envision change beyond the status quo and to achieve a higher effectiveness with designed interventions.\u3c/p\u3

The Role of Product Design in Creating Circular Business Models: A Case Study on the Lease and Refurbishment of Baby Strollers

In the transition to a circular economy companies are exploring new business models, implying a shift from selling products to offering products in circular business models, such as leasing. Product design is thought to play a crucial role in enabling this. Having a robust overview of relevant design roles and competencies is of foundational importance for the development of circular design tools and methods, and for the development of circular economy-based design curricula in higher education. However, how the role of design and the competencies required by designers need to change has hardly been investigated. Building on insights from literature regarding competencies of designers required to consider sustainability, sustainable design, and circular design, we developed a framework in which these competencies are related to the functional, coordinating, and strategic roles that have been recognized within the literature for designers. To complement the results from the literature with insights from practice, a single longitudinal in-depth case study was carried out describing a lease and refurbishment pilot conducted by a Dutch design-driven manufacturer of baby strollers. This case study allowed verification of the literature regarding the functional and coordinating roles of the designer. In addition, we were able to fill the gap observed in the literature regarding the strategic role product designers can assume when designing offers for circular business models. The competencies that we found are (1) the ability to concurrently develop the circular business model and the product’s design and (2) the ability to anticipate how the circular offering will evolve over multiple lifecycles. These findings have been used to expand the framework

Reducing clothing production volumes by design: a critical review of sustainable fashion strategies

Based on a literature review, this article discusses how the challenge of diminishing clothing production volumes has been approached within the field of sustainable fashion. We identify six common strategies in literature and discuss the approach of user involvement in the process of design and/or manufacture of garments in detail. A critical analysis of the state of the art in the field points out that these strategies have been constructed, studied and promoted without empirical validation. The article concludes with a recommendation to move forward from conceptual to empirical studies. Analyses of existing initiatives and their results in terms of consumer buying behavior and obsolete inventory are recommended as first steps towards validation