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Articles 781 - 810 of 36559

Full-Text Articles in Art and Design

Design Philosophies, Peter Buwert Jun 2026

Design Philosophies, Peter Buwert

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Responding to the DRS26 Design Philosophies Meta-Theme call to explore the past, present and possible futures of design’s theoretical articulations, this track presents six original contributions, diving unflinchingly into the realms of design philosophy to tackle questions of ontology, epistemology, cognition, ethics and aesthetics, each wrestling productively with timely and relevant topics which illustrate and bring to life the underlying philosophical ideas being presented for appraisal. Common themes emerging across all papers are the embrace of depth, complexity, uncertainty, fallibility and humility, critical respect for the past, earnest activity in the present, and hope for the future.

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Plundergeist: Exploring Generative Ai Through Vibe Coding As Reflective Design Practice, Christian Nold Jun 2026

Plundergeist: Exploring Generative Ai Through Vibe Coding As Reflective Design Practice, Christian Nold

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Generative AI (GenAI) has sparked intense media debate, yet design research has often echoed these narratives rather than examining how GenAI reshapes everyday design practices. This paper presents a year-long auto-ethnographic study involving 34 games and apps created through vibe coding, a GenAI-native approach that uses natural-language prompts to generate code. The study reveals distinct qualities that unsettle design processes: playful intervention, creative forgetting, spectral echoes, inventive excess, and fragile limits. Two key insights emerge: designing with GenAI requires deliberate engagement with cultural archetypes and treating AI as an unruly collaborator. Drawing on John Oswald’s 1985 concept of ‘plunderphonics’, the …

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Making Futures With Textiles: Boundaries, Practice, Sustainability, Martin John Bonney Jun 2026

Making Futures With Textiles: Boundaries, Practice, Sustainability, Martin John Bonney

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores craft as a site of making and thinking, asking how practice-based ethnography can extend design theory amid ecological and social uncertainty. Drawing on apprenticeship-style fieldwork (2024-2025) with craft communities in London (UK) and Yogyakarta (Indonesia), the study engages practitioners working across textiles, silver, gold, stone, wax-resist batik, wool, and silk. While textiles provide a methodological thread, the research examines how diverse materials shape knowledge through constraints, resistances, and affordances. Grounded in design anthropology and practice-based interpretations of posthuman and new materialist thought, material agency is understood as the capacity of matter and process to influence decisions and …

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Forking Futures: Fidelity And Resolution In Responsive Prototyping, Ricardo Sosa, Clare Mary Cooper Jun 2026

Forking Futures: Fidelity And Resolution In Responsive Prototyping, Ricardo Sosa, Clare Mary Cooper

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Prototyping offers ways to anticipate futures by supporting people to inhabit futures through hands-on experiences. Prototypes offer “invitations” to suspend disbelief and make believe. A canonical distinction is made between levels of fidelity in prototyping. Here, we critically re-examine “fidelity” by asking: How may fidelity inform prototyping practices and pedagogies? How may prototyping practices be more responsive, generative and ethical? How can fidelity in prototyping contribute to engagements with futures? Building on foundational ideas in prototyping and futuring, we put forward the FIRE (Fidelity/Resolution) map, a framework for distinguishing between fidelity and resolution and for navigating their spread and interplay …

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Acknowledging The Blind Men And The Elephant In The Room, Arvind Lodaya Jun 2026

Acknowledging The Blind Men And The Elephant In The Room, Arvind Lodaya

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Systemic design addresses complex, transdisciplinary challenges by integrating systems thinking and design methods. Yet, academic discourse remains limited to formal research and institutional methods, “invisibilizing” the rich, plural, and grounded practices of grassroots non-designer practitioners such as social workers, indigenous knowledge practitioners, and community facilitators. This paper challenges that narrow epistemology, and advocates restoring practice-centricity and incorporating plurality & pluriversality as essential ethical and political commitments to advancing the field. Mashing up the metaphors of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” and “The Elephant in the Room”, it highlights the need to proactively accommodate multiple perspectives for better reflexivity. The …

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Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality In New York City, Yuchun Zhang Jun 2026

Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality In New York City, Yuchun Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Hidden Constellations examines how queer sapphic spatiality in New York City is shaped through everyday negotiations rather than formal venues. While official data record only four lesbian bars, this paper argues that scarcity in data does not signify absence in lived experience. Drawing from qualitative interviews and participatory cognitive mapping, the study treats mapping as a queer design method that transforms memory, emotion, and silence into spatial knowledge. Informed by queer phenomenology, feminist and critical cartography, and data feminism, the research reframes mapping from representation to resonance. The paper shows how sapphic individuals tactically inhabit, sense, and remake urban space …

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Reading Against The Grain: Ubuntu, Sankofa, And Rhythm As Pedagogical Infrastructures In First-Year Design Education, Yaw Ofosu-Asare Jun 2026

Reading Against The Grain: Ubuntu, Sankofa, And Rhythm As Pedagogical Infrastructures In First-Year Design Education, Yaw Ofosu-Asare

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) study examines how African philosophies can function as pedagogical infrastructures, not decorative add-ons, in first-year design education. Through a 12-week introductory studio with 25 students meeting twice weekly (2.5 hours per session), I embedded Ubuntu (relational being), Sankofa (retrieving wisdom from the past), and rhythm (cyclical temporality) into the course structure. Learning artefacts comprise studio materials, anonymised teaching feedback collected as part of routine class activities, and my own teaching observations reviewed thematically around space, time, and feedback relations. Observed teaching indicators suggested higher participation in critique (average peer comments per student rising …

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Buying, Consuming And Discarding: Consumer Value And Furniture Lifetimes, Katryn Elizabeth Elizabeth Furmston Jun 2026

Buying, Consuming And Discarding: Consumer Value And Furniture Lifetimes, Katryn Elizabeth Elizabeth Furmston

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The way consumers buy, care for, and discard their furniture reveals complex motivations that extend beyond cost and function. This paper examines the connection between consumer values, emotional attachment, and discard practices in determining the lifespan of furniture. Drawing on data from a mixed-methods approach that uses a survey, ethnographic observations, and object interviews, it analyses how consumers negotiate repair, justify replacement, and assign value to objects. It is argued that furniture consumption cannot be reduced to personal preference and market availability. Instead, it is influenced by cultural norms, consumer mobility, and access to durable goods. This paper proposes design …

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Bodies In Play: Queering Ai, Sport, And Medicine Through Design, Felix Kosok Jun 2026

Bodies In Play: Queering Ai, Sport, And Medicine Through Design, Felix Kosok

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Queerness in design often operates from the margins, yet to remain transformative it must also confront the heteronormative hegemonies embedded in central societal infrastructures. This paper examines how queer design intervenes in the fields of artificial intelligence, sport, and healthcare, identifying three strategies through which design can challenge normative systems: disruption, subversion, and circumvention. Through a comparative analysis of three case studies – Christensen and Conradi’s AI/IA experiments with queer artificial intelligence, Gabriel Fontana’s sport design projects Multiform and Sidelined, and the queer-led digital health platform Every Health – the paper explores how design practices reconfigure infrastructures that regulate bodies, …

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Función-Nepantla: The “Other” Functionality Inspired By Mexican Philosophy For Rethinking Industrial Design In Mexico, José De La O Jun 2026

Función-Nepantla: The “Other” Functionality Inspired By Mexican Philosophy For Rethinking Industrial Design In Mexico, José De La O

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design in Mexico, often disconnected from the local industry value chain, has long relied on arte popular as a self-referential cultural narrative to add value, establish identity, and find its “substance.” While this practice stems from a genuine search for rootedness and authenticity, it frequently leads to stagnation, raises concerns about cultural appropriation, neo-colonial dynamics between designers and craftspeople, neglect of functionality, and lack of innovation. This paper critiques this and proposes a framework for defining functionality, rooted in Mexican philosophy as an alternative value system. Drawing on thinkers such as Emilio Uranga and Grupo Hiperión’s work, it identifies parallels …

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Empowerment For Aging Design: A Framework To Reframe The Design Of Solutions For Older Adults In The Global South, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Mariana Ramírez Jun 2026

Empowerment For Aging Design: A Framework To Reframe The Design Of Solutions For Older Adults In The Global South, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Mariana Ramírez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design for older adults in Latin America remains strongly shaped by deficit-based and assistentialist assumptions that reduce aging to decline. Grounded in empowerment-oriented and resource-based design, this study explores how empowerment values can reframe the ideation of solutions for older people. Workshops conducted in five Colombian cities, supported by the Empowerment Nodes tool, enabled the identification of value expressions often overlooked in traditional design approaches. The findings culminated in the Empowerment Framework for Aging Design, a three-layered model composed of seven Silver Goals, fourteen Empowerment Values, and thirty-seven Enhancers, each paired with limiting counterparts that reveal how ageist paradigms subtly …

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Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Tala Pedraza, Laura Sofía Riveros Jun 2026

Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Tala Pedraza, Laura Sofía Riveros

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Café Séneca, the largest affinity chapter of the Uniandinos Alumni Association in Colombia, is dedicated to the wellbeing of older adults and led by retired members. Despite its popularity, the chapter lacked a strategic design structure, relying on inertia to shape its activities and limiting its ability to evolve sustainably. This paper presents a reflective case study of SenSilver, a situated participatory strategic design framework developed for organizations led by and for older adults. Combining business, positive, and empowerment-oriented design with biological, social, and psychological dimensions of aging, the framework was applied through a research-consultancy process with Café Séneca. The …

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Dynamics In Relating Craft Practices, Distinguishing Shifting Emotional States To Expand Tacit Knowledge Transfer, Catherine Schwarz, Nicola Sofia Rohsig Lopez, Yassamine Zmir, Jean-François Bassereau, Jenny Faucheu Jun 2026

Dynamics In Relating Craft Practices, Distinguishing Shifting Emotional States To Expand Tacit Knowledge Transfer, Catherine Schwarz, Nicola Sofia Rohsig Lopez, Yassamine Zmir, Jean-François Bassereau, Jenny Faucheu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Disappearing tacit knowledge in high-end craft industries and expert industries, stresses the need to examine the workings of crafting to maintain and gain competitive advantage. To pursue this study, we have been conducting interviews with craft professionals and apprentices to gather insight into their rapport with their practices. Using quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods, we have identified specific moments of a craftsperson’s discourse when relating to their practice, revealing distinct emotional states during the interaction with the material. These findings support enquiry into the craftsperson’s emotional states during the craft practice, to expand knowledge transfer.

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More-Than-Human Perspectives In Teaching Technology Design: From Research To Classroom, To The Real World?, Elisabet M. Nilsson, Rikke Hagensby Jensen, Wolmet Barendregt, Daisy Yoo, Anne-Marie Hansen, Eva Eriksson Jun 2026

More-Than-Human Perspectives In Teaching Technology Design: From Research To Classroom, To The Real World?, Elisabet M. Nilsson, Rikke Hagensby Jensen, Wolmet Barendregt, Daisy Yoo, Anne-Marie Hansen, Eva Eriksson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of considering more-than-human (MtH) perspectives in the design of technology, especially in academia. However, to cause real-world impact, it is essential that such awareness is translated into practical action. One way to do so is by educating new designers to apply MtH perspectives. Teaching MtH to design students requires teachers to develop educational materials on the role that MtH perspectives play in design. Currently, there are not many examples of educational materials that teachers can take inspiration from. This paper therefore presents a collection of practical teaching activities to introduce students to …

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Influence And Potential Of Quintessential Forms As Inspirational Stimuli, Beatriz De Moura Figueiredo Jun 2026

Influence And Potential Of Quintessential Forms As Inspirational Stimuli, Beatriz De Moura Figueiredo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Quintessential products, forms widely perceived as typical examples of their category, are embedded in everyday life, yet their influence on product design ideation remains largely unexplored. This study investigates if and how such products can affect inspiration in the creative process of students and suggests approaches on how to address fixation, should it arise from the quintessential stimuli. Through a multi-modal case study with design students working on product development briefs, the research captures both self-reported and observed data to reveal patterns in creative decision-making. The findings indicate that quintessence is not particularly perceived as highly inspirational; however, there might …

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Projects As Actors In Design Education, Barak Pelman, Edith Bouton Jun 2026

Projects As Actors In Design Education, Barak Pelman, Edith Bouton

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how design projects function as actors within studio-based pedagogy, drawing on Actor-Network Theory. Data were collected over a nine-month fieldwork at a higher education institution, covering courses in architecture, industrial design, and ceramics design. The study was conducted as a Research-Practice Partnership, uniting education researchers and design practitioners to shift the focus away from practitioners' specialized knowledge and experiences by positioning them alongside critical perspectives from K-12 educational research. Our findings demonstrate how students and instructors view projects as active actors in the design process across three main dimensions: 1) Through language: instructors and students personify projects, …

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Infrastructuring Transitional Bio-Materialities: Case Of The Biomakerstudio, Ena Naito Jun 2026

Infrastructuring Transitional Bio-Materialities: Case Of The Biomakerstudio, Ena Naito

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers today are actively engaging with experimentation and innovation of bio-materials derived from living matter, foregrounding the interrelationship between biological processes, material design, and ecological responsibility. In this context, workspaces that provide conditions to design with living organisms become especially crucial to leverage their transitional material potentials. Grounded upon a 24-month research-through-design study, this paper discusses the ground-up infrastructuring work of establishing a biodesign workspace to support designing with living matter in a university setting. I highlight the emergent nature of such endeavour, including the continuous alignment, containment, and care and maintenance work necessary for growing a provisional intervention into …

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Designing With Care For The End Of Life: A Reflective Co-Design Workshop Using Material Facilitation, Chenfei Yu, Michael Arnold Mages Jun 2026

Designing With Care For The End Of Life: A Reflective Co-Design Workshop Using Material Facilitation, Chenfei Yu, Michael Arnold Mages

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Conversations about end-of-life (EOL) care are often delayed until moments of crisis, leaving little time or emotional capacity for people to reflect on what matters most to them. This paper reports on a reflective co-design workshop in which fifteen participants used material-facilitated methods to explore their imagined EOL experiences. Through landscape making, journey mapping, and collaborative service model building, participants expressed hopes, fears, values, and priorities that are difficult to articulate through direct questioning. The materials created a low-pressure and supportive environment, allowing participants to approach a sensitive topic at their own pace and translate personal meaning into ideas for …

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Disrupting Gender Binaries In Product Language: A Workshop On Gender Awareness, Martina Labarta Labrador, Francesca Mattioli, Silvia D. Ferraris Jun 2026

Disrupting Gender Binaries In Product Language: A Workshop On Gender Awareness, Martina Labarta Labrador, Francesca Mattioli, Silvia D. Ferraris

DRS Biennial Conference Series

When introduced to product language—the interplay between aesthetic qualities and conveyed meanings—design students often learn that objects embody gender. Soft, curved, and organic shapes are typically framed as feminine, while monolithic and sturdy shapes are most likely labelled as masculine. Although this vocabulary bridges human communication and aesthetics, it also risks reinforcing stereotypes. Building on ongoing doctoral research investigating how product language can reproduce or challenge discrimination, a five-day workshop with 23 bachelor's design students was developed. Through reflective and analytical activities, participants examined gender beyond the binary, exploring how products convey gender norms and how aesthetic qualities embed narratives …

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Reimagining Body–Instrument Relations Through Feminist Design Practice: Reflections On An E-Textile Musical Interface, Qiaosheng Lyu, Ryo Ikeshiro Jun 2026

Reimagining Body–Instrument Relations Through Feminist Design Practice: Reflections On An E-Textile Musical Interface, Qiaosheng Lyu, Ryo Ikeshiro

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how e-textile musical interface can reimagine the relationship between body and instrument from a feminist perspective. Drawing on a practice-based research project, the study examines how soft, deformable materials and embodied interaction can challenge the masculine-coded logic of control that dominates digital musical instrument (DMI) design. Constructed from knitted conductive textiles, the interface functions both as musical controller and prostheses that redistributes agency between performer and instrument. Through design practice, reflective performance, and a somatic experiment with another performer, the research investigates the entangled relationship between performer and instrument from a feminist perspective. The findings suggest that …

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Design Methods As Cognitive Tools: Understanding Method Usage Through Cognitive Theories, Jakob Clemen Lavrsen Jun 2026

Design Methods As Cognitive Tools: Understanding Method Usage Through Cognitive Theories, Jakob Clemen Lavrsen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While design methods are a crucial aspect of design research, education, and practice, our understanding of how they work and what shapes their performance remains limited. To address this, this paper reports on a theory-building effort, outlining core aspects of the phenomenon of method usage in design. Following recent calls for grounding design research in cognitive science, it frames method usage as a cognitive process and integrates cognitive load theory and dual-process theory to describe central relationships between the design method, the method user, and the context of usage. The paper concludes by highlighting that method performance emerges from these …

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Situating Textile Design: Practice Research In Interdisciplinary Material Science Projects, Rebecca Earley, Laetitia Forst Jun 2026

Situating Textile Design: Practice Research In Interdisciplinary Material Science Projects, Rebecca Earley, Laetitia Forst

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Textile design practice research (TDPR) has recently been used in the delivery of multiple largescale material science-based projects. This paper considers the role TDPR played in the EU-funded HEREWEAR project and how has it contributed to theories of design practice research. The full range of textile experimentation - including engineering and design-led sampling - is mapped; then three TDPR interventions are explored using annotated portfolio approaches (Gaver & Bowers, 2012) framed by ‘sited’, ’situated’ and ‘situating’ conditions (Kaszynska & Kimbell, 2024). The authors examine the results from the TDPR within the context of various communities of validation, presenting how TDPR …

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When Frames Collide: Participatory Frame Navigation Through Co-Design In Policy Contexts, Nicholas Spencer, Joyce Yee, Margaret Defeyter Jun 2026

When Frames Collide: Participatory Frame Navigation Through Co-Design In Policy Contexts, Nicholas Spencer, Joyce Yee, Margaret Defeyter

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design’s expanding presence in policy has generated multiple expressions of its value and impact, yet few address the political and strategic dimensions of policymaking. This paper examines how co-design operates within these dynamics by navigating frame conflicts during policy problem-setting and policy options modelling. Drawing on Schön and Rein’s theory of Frame Reflection, we analyse how institutional framings of policy issues collide with those held by communities, and how co-design practices surface, negotiate, and reconfigure these conflicts. Through two English case studies: 1) School Food Systems and 2) Breakfast Clubs, we show how co-design reveals divergent interpretations of public problems …

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Exploring Future Smellscapes With Smellwalks, Zuzana Neupauerová, Simone Ashby, Supraja Sankaran Jun 2026

Exploring Future Smellscapes With Smellwalks, Zuzana Neupauerová, Simone Ashby, Supraja Sankaran

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how present-day smell encounters stimulate participants to reflect on possible futures and those scents that are emergent or susceptible to becoming transformed or lost altogether. We describe our speculative design setup whereby participants assumed the persona of an olfactory researcher from the year 2100, armed with a smell passport and set of vials, and tasked with time-traveling back to 2025 to capture scent samples. Smellwalk observations span three themes: environmental awareness of scent, the functional role of future scents, and social and cultural dimensions of olfaction. We discuss those scents which participants found to be particularly salient …

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Constraints As Knowledge Amplifiers: Understanding How Research-Through-Design Makes Design Knowledge Visible, Amit Kundal, Tina Mangwani Jun 2026

Constraints As Knowledge Amplifiers: Understanding How Research-Through-Design Makes Design Knowledge Visible, Amit Kundal, Tina Mangwani

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Research-through-Design (RtD) continues to grapple with how prototypes can generate comparable design knowledge beyond stand-alone studies. This paper addresses that gap by studying how knowledge takes shape in constrained design settings, where limitations themselves become sources of insight. Using the case of affordable dental care in India, chosen for its material, spatial, and procedural limitations, the study shows how constraints can make tacit design understandings more visible. From this work, three categories of knowledge emerged: embodied negotiation of ergonomics, enacted hygiene, and modularity-for-resilience. These categories describe how designers learn through doing, maintaining, and adjusting within limitations. Rather than focusing on …

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The Future Of Architectural Design Research: An Emerging Niche In Digital Transition, Angela Rout, Michael Tjia, Marija Mateljan Jun 2026

The Future Of Architectural Design Research: An Emerging Niche In Digital Transition, Angela Rout, Michael Tjia, Marija Mateljan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

To remain effective in an era of technological flux and AI-driven tools, architects must continuously expand their knowledge base. Architectural research and education must evolve alongside these digital transitions to secure legitimacy and funding within academic institutions. This paper asks how the architectural design research community can self-manage in response to these changes. Using the lens of Strategic Niche Management (SNM), we examine how design research behaves as an emerging niche seeking to participate in broader academic regimes. We conducted a multi-stage review of the Design Research Society (DRS) Conference Biennale Series (2002–2024), involving a quantitative analysis of over 2,000 …

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Recognize Ourselves, Understand And Transform: An Approach To A Latin American Feminist Design Methodology, Dora Sánchez-Hidalgo Jun 2026

Recognize Ourselves, Understand And Transform: An Approach To A Latin American Feminist Design Methodology, Dora Sánchez-Hidalgo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents a first approach to a Latin American feminist design method based on three actions proposed by the Chilean feminist sociologist Julieta Kirkwood who said feminist praxis required to (1) know the structures of oppression, (2) recognize our place in them and (3) transform them through our practice. Although the intersection between design and feminism has successfully pointed out the false neutrality in design practice and its potential to imagine more equal futures, practical approaches are still needed as a guidance to put feminist design into practice. Therefore, this design method based on understanding, recognizing ourselves and transforming …

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Beyond The Menace Of The Gaze: Archetypes, Dualities, And Emptiness In Alexander Mcqueen’S Fashion Philosophy, Andjela Bisevac Jun 2026

Beyond The Menace Of The Gaze: Archetypes, Dualities, And Emptiness In Alexander Mcqueen’S Fashion Philosophy, Andjela Bisevac

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Western philosophy has often framed the gaze as alienation: for Sartre, the self fractures through being-for-others, while for Lacan the subject becomes object within the visual field. Norman Bryson (1988) expands this view by engaging Japanese thought—particularly Nishida and Nishitani—to propose a relational gaze grounded in śūnyatā (emptiness). This paper argues that Alexander McQueen’s fashion materially performs this philosophical shift. Across four feminine archetypes—the Armored, Vulnerable, Elegant, and Transformative Woman—McQueen stages a movement from confrontation to relation. Through these tensions, McQueen’s fashion operates as existential design discourse: a mode of design in which form interrogates what it means to see …

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Promoting The Development Of Critical Thinking Among Design Novices In Aigc-Aided Design Processes, Peiyuan Ge, Fei Fan* Jun 2026

Promoting The Development Of Critical Thinking Among Design Novices In Aigc-Aided Design Processes, Peiyuan Ge, Fei Fan*

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The use of AIGC to assist in design is increasingly common in industry and classrooms. Designers delegate critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making to AI, leading to mental inertia and blind obedience, making learners’ critical thinking crucial. This study explores how AIGC-aided E6 design thinking affects beginner designers’ critical thinking via controlled experiments. Beginners conducted "future travel products" concept design, generating sketches on LiblibAI, with the E6 design thinking scale as an intervention. Data were collected via repeated generation, retesting, and interviews. Results: 58.82% of the scale items showed improved critical thinking, 71.43% of the works were rated better by experts, …

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Reciprocal Value Between Learning And Circular Practices, Franchesca Michaela De Moura, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Christina Breed Jun 2026

Reciprocal Value Between Learning And Circular Practices, Franchesca Michaela De Moura, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Christina Breed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigates how adaptive reuse servicescapes may contribute to sustainable transformation through learning, by leveraging circular practices as experiential learning tools. Research on circular economy rarely adopts a human-centred lens or explores its links to learning, especially in the Global South, where the value of alternative epistemologies and informal economies often remains unrecognised. To address this gap, a qualitative case study approach was employed, combining participant observation and semi-structured interviews at educational initiatives in an adaptive reuse precinct in inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa. The findings reveal a reciprocal relationship between education and circular practices in generating value for sustainable …

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