Challenging designers to tackle climate change around the world

Design Challenges for Climate Change 

How can designers tackle a problem as complex as climate change? That is a question Stby has been putting forward in the last two years, as the research partner of What Design Can Do. Based on extensive desk research and primary research with key stakeholders, STBY has developed a wide range of briefs with detailed background information and challenging starting points for the Clean Energy Challenge (2018-2019) and the Climate Action Challenge (2017-2018).

Both challenges called on creatives to come up with innovative and creative ideas to tackle climate change and climate adaptation. The challenges are open to students, start-ups and professionals who can win funding and access to an acceleration programme to realise their ideas. In STBY’s research process to develop the briefs for the two challenges, the key principle at all times was to put people and planet at the centre. Whether interviewing designers, reading official reports, or iterating the the brief matrix, the central question is always: What is the impact on people and their environment, and what difference can they make?

Local Relevance of Design 

Global challenges, local actions

The local relevancy of a design challenge is very important. That is why several local partners of the Reach network played a key role in the research of the Clean Energy Challenge. This challenge is focussed on five globally influential cities. From the initial desk research, STBY identified five key topics that seemed to be relevant to most cities. For each city, specific local briefings were then crafted together with our local partners – informed by locally relevant themes and momentum, and also local design capacities. Several co-creative workshops were organised, with the objective to gather insights on local energy issues from experts in the field. The resulting local focus points are:

Waste in Mexico City

delaO design studio, based in México City, did design research in this enormous sprawling city that has struggled with waste for many years. They found that with the closure of its largest landfill, and new initiatives to promote recycling and waste-to-energy solutions, México City is now in a position to be an example for the region. But behaviours and mindsets still have a long way to go. And there is lots that design can do here. Building on political momentum, we are calling on designers to use their creative problem-solving skills to imagine new narratives, services, products, spaces and systems to encourage cleaner and greener waste handling behaviours across México City.

Moving around in São Paulo‍

São Paulo based Flutter Innovation hosted co-creative workshops in their city and concluded that São Paulo’s infrastructure was not built to accommodate large numbers of private vehicles and trucks, and plans that cater to them will quite literally pave the way for further increases in car ownership, congestion, wasted fuel and emissions. Not to even mention more wasted hours sitting in traffic. Initiatives to extend and upgrade São Paulo’s public transport and freight network move slowly. That’s why we are calling on designers to find creative and radical solutions for more sustainable flows of people and goods through the city.

Building in Delhi‍

In order to craft a locally relevant briefing for the Clean Energy Challenge, Quicksand collected real and local stories about building in Delhi. In Delhi the need to build fast to serve rapidly swelling populations results in haphazard urban planning, with both commercial buildings and informal settlements mushrooming without much consideration for sustainability. Commercial and residential buildings account for most of Indian cities’ energy consumption, through heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, hot water heating, interior and exterior lighting, electrical power and appliances. But in the rush to build affordable housing — much needed in a city where millions live in poverty in informal settlements with no access to electricity or sanitation — the sustainability of homes is low on the agenda.

Eating in Nairobi‍

To save energy across the food supply chain, food waste should be prevented. Food waste can be addressed with more efficient refrigeration, transport networks and connections between producers and consumers. While urban farms are not an unusual sight in Nairobi, further innovations in city farming would foster the urban market and boost local food yields. In turn, this could save energy expended on food transportation and distribution while encouraging local supply and demand for healthy and sustainable food across income levels. To gain insight in the local food supply  hosted a workshop together with Kenyan organisation WiBO Cultures.

Cityscapes of Amsterdam

‍In Amsterdam’s city centre, packed with monuments and protected buildings, there is little space for clean energy infrastructure. Solar panels and other visible interventions are not permitted on historic buildings. Other infrastructure necessary for the transition, such as electricity substations and transformers, are too big to fit in the narrow and dense urban plan. Amsterdam-based Stby researched Amsterdam’s energy problem and concluded that aesthetic concerns play a role in much of the wider metropolitan area, too. The IJmeer lake and on-land ‘buffer’ zones, are used for recreation or transport. Many feel that current visions of clean energy infrastructure development in these areas will make them less attractive or useful for other needs of urban dwellers.

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