Planetary design

For design to develop and remain relevant, it is essential to acknowledge planetary and life-centred needs. These needs challenge not only design, but also service production and delivery, and consumption as a whole. Planetary design situates design practice within planetary boundaries and Earth systems. It understands human, technological, social, and ecological processes as deeply interdependent. This approach seeks to contribute to planetary well-being by addressing systemic challenges across spatial, temporal, and socio-material scales, while acknowledging ethical responsibility for more-than-human life and future generations.

Design has created added value within private and public service–product systems by identifying and responding to human needs. Designers have championed human-centredness, usability, accessibility, holistic approaches, functionality, and coherence in service delivery—and have developed tools and processes to support these aims. To remain innovative, design must continue to experiment, work at the margins, and take risks, while staying within planetary boundaries. Arts-based methods are also integral to design and can be especially valuable in addressing community needs—particularly in vulnerable communities—while keeping critical thinking at the centre of design.

What tensions arise between creative practice, more-than-human thinking, cultural heritage, user- and life-centredness, and emerging technologies (AI and XR) as we seek to remain within planetary boundaries?

Nordes 2027 will feature several tracks on planetary design, including topics such as a temporal turn, emerging technologies, productive discomfort, and film.

A Temporal Turn

The notion of temporality, Time With and Time Away, redirects attention toward real, situated, uncontrolled, and constantly changing environments. What happens when time itself becomes a design material, when we design not only with materials, but with their temporalities? Material Driven Design (MDD) has traditionally been rooted in designer-material interactions staged in studios, laboratories, and exhibitions. Is life-centeredness influencing these practices? Although temporalities are central to material behaviour, they are rarely captured in short-term, controlled experiments or installations. How can MDD be expanded beyond laboratory and gallery contexts to account for dynamic, real-world material-human-environment relationships? What methodologies could support this shift, for example, through living labs or by treating the city as a living canvas? And what happens to MDD when materials are investigated in everyday, uncontrolled settings rather than in a lab or studio?

Emerging technologies

It is necessary to establish a socially responsible and planet-friendly developmental trajectory with emerging technologies. How can they be enhanced further? How can designers tackle business and social challenges by using them? AI technologies catalyse the development of other technical devices. Emerging technologies such as Extended Reality (XR) – but not limited to this technology – are especially benefiting from the AI development. However, the current developmental process focuses on advancing technical realisation (e.g., photorealistic movies) and may cause social issues (e.g., through deep-fake movies).

Productive discomfort

Productive discomfort helps researchers recognise the constructive value of conflicting societal values. In interaction design, it is understood as a process that promotes positive change by encouraging individuals to confront discomfort tied to their experiences. In education, productive discomfort is an essential element of learning, occurring as students confront and integrate (or not) new information into their existing understanding. In ethnographic research, it can facilitate resistance to intellectually oppressive situations by fostering questioning and reflection. The theme invites a broad research dialogue that examines issues at the individual, organisational, and societal levels by asking: How can designers differentiate between forms of discomfort that enhance agency and critical awareness, and those that merely normalise instability, precarity, or cognitive overload under the guise of innovation? 

Film

How can moving images contribute to rethinking planetary relations in a time of ecological crisis? This track invites artist-researchers, filmmakers, designers, and activists working with short films, experimental film, documentary practices, and audiovisual essays to submit works engaging with themes of planetarity, multispecies worlds, ecological relations, communities, and Indigenous perspectives. Within design research, artistic research, and practice-based inquiry, moving images are increasingly understood not only as representational media but also as methods of investigation and forms of design intervention. Film, moving images and audiovisual practices can make perceptible the entanglements between humans, non-human beings, environments, technologies, and infrastructures that shape planetary conditions. In this sense, moving images may function as research through art and design, enabling speculative, critical, and situated explorations of ecological relations.