The 2023 Common Design Studio explores our relationship with the air that we share, locally and globally, designing for the planet as well as diverse human needs.

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​For this year’s Common Design Studio the overarching theme of ‘Air’ provided a direction for all the student groups. We collectively aim to offer more than preventative measures - instead looking to positive futures made possible through knowledge sharing and design as a means of action. 

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The current ecological crisis presents consequences for all of us and as designers we have a responsibility to act, propose, challenge and share. Over the period of two weeks students and staff collaboratively worked together on the Planetary Health Cookbook, populated with radical interventions, design challenges, guides, advice, hacks, tips, tutorials, instruction sets, individual stories, coping mechanisms, training exercises, manifestos and collective actions; recipes for people to act on individually or collectively. 

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This project has a design-led focus on developing actionable strategies for a beneficial, sustainable, holistic relationship with the earth, its diverse peoples, its flora and fauna, addressing some of the risks to our interconnected ecologies.  

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Guest speakers

 

• Tobias Revell & James Bellinger - ARUP /
  Air Quality: Designing for the invisible  
   

• Eva Verhoeven - UAL Creative Computing & Robotics / 
  Obtrusive Relationships: Commons in Design with a focus on human de-centred design
   

• Olga Subirós - Designer, Curator, Researcher /
  Air / Aria / Aire / Air Pollution Global Conflict 
   

• Alban Mannisi -  Scapethical /
  Environmental History of Air 
   

• Malte Wagenfeld - Breathe Earth Collective / 
  Designing Sensual Urban Atmospheres …in the context of climate change