ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a reflection on the overall evolution of design for sustainability. Design for sustainability approaches are categorised into five innovation levels: material/component, product, product–service system, spatio-social and socio-technical system. As a result, the chapter puts forward an innovation framework capable of coherently integrating the different design for sustainability approaches. The framework provides an understanding of the overall evolution of design for sustainability, showing how it has progressively expanded from a narrow technical and product-centric focus towards a focus on large-scale system-level changes. The framework provides a synthesis of the design for sustainability field and illustrates how the various approaches contribute to particular sustainability aspects. It also visualises linkages, overlaps and complementarities between the different approaches. The chapter discusses how the framework can be used in different ways by design researchers, educators and practitioners. It also reflects on the knowledge and know-how that are required by designers to apply the various design for sustainability approaches, and concludes by outlining the potential future evolution of the field.
