ABSTRACT

With a bias for action, this book offers valuable insights into the origins of the much-celebrated Danish design tradition and how it can be employed to create design solutions to address today’s environmental crisis using the planetary boundaries as positive creative constraints.

Danish design has long been revered for its high-quality aesthetics, materials and craftmanship, encouraging sustainability without compromise. This book explores the lessons to be learnt from Scandinavian design ideals, introduces the philosophy and principles of circular economy and showcases the potential power of combining circular economy and design in helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. It presents a range of case study examples across multiple sectors and includes interviews with Danish designers from architecture, furniture, fashion, digital and industrial design, providing unique insights by some of the world’s leading contemporary designers.

Bridging theory and real-world insights and experiences, this book builds on the framework of the 4Rs – The Circular Way: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Replace to encourage innovation through the replacement of environmentally damaging materials and business models. A must-read for product designers, industrial designers, consultants, business developers, sustainability professionals and students interested in learning how to design and implement circular, sustainable models into practice.

chapter 1|18 pages

Design in the Anthropocene

chapter 2|16 pages

Learning from Danish design

chapter 3|19 pages

Systems design in the Anthropocene

chapter 4|18 pages

The troubles we are in

chapter 5|4 pages

Partnering with life: The essence of regeneration

An essay

chapter 6|7 pages

Theory meets practice and magic happens

chapter 7|7 pages

Manifesto

Design in the Anthropocene

chapter 9|19 pages

The Circular Way

chapter 10|11 pages

Nature's playbook

chapter 11|12 pages

Technology

Friend or foe?

chapter 12|8 pages

Plastic not so fantastic

chapter 13|31 pages

Building The Circular Way

chapter 14|14 pages

Designing our cities the Danish way

chapter 15|10 pages

Copenhagenize

Designing regenerative mobility