BAŞAK ALTAN
Reimagining the future through design.

CASE STUDIES

CASE STUDY: RE-DESIGNING THE DESIGN EDUCATION FOR CIRCULAR ECONOMY

 
 
 

DESIGN EDUCATION FOR CIRCULAR ECONOMY

The Social Impact and Sustainability studio was designed and facilitated by Başak Altan for CCA Industrial Design Department. The goal of the studio was to create tangible design solutions while focusing on facilitating social change for the circular economy. The first half of the studio exposed the students to examples of sustainable frameworks within the context of designing for a circular economy, in the latter half of the studio students worked on team projects using practical tools and techniques for identifying issues, developing solutions, troubleshooting problems in their designs.design research and human-centered design mindset and methods.

CHALLENGE:

How can we foster organic design education facilitating social change for the circular economy?

SOLUTION:

  • The course covered fundamentals of designing for a circular economy, sustainability and social impact by building an understanding, awareness, and comfort using sustainability criteria and frameworks.

  • To design resilient, long-lasting value driven experiences that are restorative by design the students were tasked with demonstrating their understanding of the business context that their solutions lived in.

  • To practice team collaboration, presentation, design, and critical thinking skills the teams were assigned professional mentors

IMPACT:

  • Aiming to fostering designers for the circular economy, the design education initiatives taken by Başak Altan, resulted in internationally recognized, pioneering and award-winning product designs by her students teams. Two team projects out of the four teams, won awards at the prestigious International Design Awards:

    • Team AXO brought home the GOLD award for Social Impact and Designing for society.

    • Team O'KO brought home the BRONZE award for Sustainability.

  • All of the design teams integrated their findings from the business canvas into their solutions and were able to impress and convince the jurors of the new value in their offerings within the circular economy.

  • The learnings from the studio were documented in an education paper titled: Organic Design Education for Circular Economy which was selected by peer reviews to be presented at the International Design Education Symposium Conference in 2020.

  • The Organic Design Education for Circular Economy Paper is also published on IDSA.org

 
 
Basak Altan