Infrastructuring just sutainability transitions: prefiguring missions inside a challenge-driven innovation program from Design and Architechture Norway
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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Date
2022
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Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
105 + 5
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Abstract
Across the local to global scale, governance systems are unprepared to respond to interconnected crises, such as social exclusion and biodiversity collapse. Following, a gap exists between the need for urgent change, and the slow pace of action in sustainability transitions. Addressing this gap demands systemic strategies that are adaptable to institutional contexts and actionable today. Design contributes to these contexts by integrating perspectives and desires, imagining alternatives and stewarding processes for continuous learning and adjustments. During my employment at Design and Architecture Norway, I conducted systemic action research within and around Gnist, a design-led and challenge-driven innovation program for sustainable place development. There have been 16 municipal organizations attending the program between 2020-2022, each with unique challenges. During the course of a year, qualitative data were collected from everyday observations, background material for white papers, workshop outputs, along with 28 interview transcripts from participants in Gnist such as: designers/other professionals in placemaking, government officials, regional authorities, and public agencies. A consistent finding in the literature review and research is the importance of learning loops in transitions, with systematic learning processes lacking at several government levels. This thesis emphasizes enabling mechanisms for bottom-up change. It addresses two research questions: “What are the learnings and future aspirations based on three iterations of Gnist?”, and “How could Design and Architecture Norway infrastructure just sustainability transitions?”. Fortunately, design is an integrative discipline, and my thesis aims to synthesize literature concerned with design and transitions and the research findings into a portfolio of suggestions and strategies. By facilitating the emergence of governance systems that allow experimentation, learning and aligned change initiatives, designing missions appear to be the most promising method of overriding sector logics. Missions are bold, inspirational and targeted commitments towards addressing grand challenges, they are explored worldwide and science-based missions have launched in Norway. Thus, there is a window of opportunity to define and exemplify how missions oriented towards just sustainability transitions could be configured. There are several practical configurations of the Gnist-program that prefigure possible models for developing angles, concepts and prototypes for co-designing local missions. Specifically, the program has the ability to produce place-based design briefs at scale, facilitate emerging design- and placemaking communities of practice, and at times empower public administrations to self-organize co-creative processes.Description
Supervisor
Berglund, EevaThesis advisor
Hodson, EliseKeywords
infrastructuring, just sustainability transitions, public sector, codesign, transitions, systemic design, public innovation, innovation program