Essential Reading: Designing for Transitions

Transition Design is influenced by diverse fields such as systems theory, social ecology, sustainability transitions, alternative economics, and the study of history and Indigenous cultures. These influences share a focus on systemic approaches to complex social, ecological, political, and technological problems, and support an emerging ecological worldview.

Several texts give an overview of the intellectual foundations of Transition Design. The Systems View of Life by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi gives a comprehensive account of contemporary systems theory, which is integral to Transition Design. The Tao of Liberation by Mark Hathaway and Leonardo Boff advocates for societal transformation, from the perspectives of science, spirituality, psychology, and economics. In Designs for the Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar critiques Western design and proposes a decolonized, non-capitalist approach, emphasizing the interdependence of all beings.

Core principles of Transition Design are long-term thinking to address systemic problems and the recognition that myriad forms of societal organization have existed, and could exist in the future. In The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand calls for extending our concept of the present to the past and the future. The History Manifesto by Jo Guldi and David Armitage argues that an understanding of past societal transitions should inform current ones. The World We Made by Jonathon Porritt presents a vision of a sustainable future and backcasts potential pathways. Lo—TEK by Julia Watson shows how Indigenous societies’ symbiotic relationships with nature and technology enabled them to flourish.

Transition Design builds on Donella Meadows’ concept (outlined in her paper Places to Intervene in a System) of leverage points which can be used to catalyze systemic change. İdil Gaziulusoy and Elif Erdoğan Öztekin’s paper, Design for Sustainability Transitions, trace the field’s development, and an early work by Terry Irwin, Cameron Tonkinwise, and Gideon Kossoff, Transition Design: An Educational Framework for Advancing the Study and Design of Sustainable Transitions, argues that Transition Design is a logical development in design’s increasing engagement with complex problems. Irwin and Kossoff’s papers Transition Design: Wicked Problem Resolution as a Strategy for Catalyzing Positive Systems-Level Change and Transition Design as a Strategy for Addressing Urban Wicked Problems are overviews of the theory and applied approach. Lastly, in Cosmopolitan Localism: The Planetary Networking of Everyday Life in Place, Kossoff argues for a new kind of decentralized but globally coordinated society.