Building Bridges through Prototyping: a Visual Mapping of a Transdisciplinary Design Research Process on Youth Participation in Urban Planning
Emilia Knabe (1), Stefanie Buhr (2)
(1) University of the Arts Berlin/University of Applied Sciences Potsdam; (2) State Capital of Potsdam
The contribution presents a visualization of a transdisciplinary design research process with the aim of involving more young people in decision-making processes such as city planning through the use of design methods. For this, pupils, teachers, municipal staff, and a design researcher collaboratively developed a workshop kit to encourage youth participation in urban planning. The research follows a "research through design" approach, the development of the workshop kit being research subject and object of the research at the same time. Throughout the process, design methods were considered epistemic tools that facilitate negotiation, reflection, and social learning.
The visualization maps the complex co-design process, focusing not on the final product but on the relational dynamics that shaped it. Informed by theories of bricolage and boundary negotiation, gigamapping is used to illustrate actor interactions, methodological bridges, and emergent insights across institutional boundaries. The visualization reveals the potential of design methods as an intermediary practice that enables alignment and dispute across conflicting value systems in administration, education, and youth culture. The contribution intends to offer methodological insights and possibly open new pathways for researchers and practitioners seeking to initiate inclusive participatory processes in complex municipal settings.
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The Pollination Hub: Reflect, Connect, Exchange
Minh-Ngyuet Le, Roleen Sevillena, Tetiana Kaliuzhnai, Jithmini Fernando
While design for social transformation usually aims to improve conditions beyond itself, we often overlook that our own institutions, pedagogies, and infrastructures also need transformation.
The Pollinator Hub at the SDN Conference invites participants to reflect, connect, and exchange around the following questions: what does the field of design for social transformation need in order to flourish in the future? What resources and conditions do we require to carry out the work we envision? And how can we make our community more accessible to new emerging voices?
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Memory Shells: Reconnecting Lebanese Youth to Lost National Belonging and Memory
Mariane Meshaka
IE University (Alumni), Spain; marianemeshaka@gmail.com
Even after the end of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), the symbolic divisions established by military barricades remained in Lebanon's architectural, political, and social landscapes, reinforcing the degradation of Lebanese society along sectarian and religious divisions to this day. The October 2019 Uprising marked an unprecedented moment of national unity in which people came together regardless of political or religious affiliations. As a main stage for the Uprising and with several threats to its existence, ‘the Egg’, an abandoned cinema, has rebirthed into a symbol of resistance, revolution, and reclamation in Beirut. Located on the former green line that separated Muslim West from Christian East during the Civil War, the Egg is the optimal platform for connecting the Lebanese war generation, post-war generation, and artisans through traditional crafts and memories to reclaim national cultural tools. By rehabilitating the Egg, “Memory Shells” aims to reimagine it as a place for intercommunal interactions and heritage preservation to rekindle lost national belonging and facilitate collective memory rebuilding in the long term.
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Bubbles Bubbles
Students of The MA Design @ HSLU
A bubble is never innocent.
It seduces with comfort, belonging, and expertise.
But it also blinds, isolates, and traps.
To design, to think critically means refusing to stay lulled inside; it means bursting, crossing, and contaminating bubbles — even at the cost of discomfort — so that knowledge, community, and creativity remain alive, unsettled, and in motion.
The MA Design first-year students bring their own bubbles to the conference. Fresh to the campus, they will step straight into the Social Design Network Conference 2025. Entering the “Social Design bubble” as newcomers, they will listen, observe, and engage in conversations, exploring its many perspectives. Their task: to translate these encounters into texts, images, sounds, or performances that connect across bubbles and spark new dialogues.
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COLLECTIVE WEAVING
Shanice Patricia Heuzeveldt
Textiles are all around us- true tactile sensations to body and mind, and as silent knowledge and memory holders, often too easily discarded and shipped to places we no longer interact with. We think of textiles as though they don’t have agency and purpose. This workshop aims at creating space for collective engagement with material. We claim that multi-perspectives on material literacy can contribute to a common understanding of regenerative textile and fashion design and consumption. Through material engagement, participants make sense of the complex realities of fashion’s toxicity in. We’ve got an old football net and discarded parachutes. No football will go through that goal again, nor will someone be flying the parachutes in the Swiss Alps. But that doesn’t mean that all is lost. They still hold the meaning of collective effort, teamwork, risk, and protection through design, so how do we give an added layer of meaning to materials? And what can we learn from them? This participatory workshop kickstarts the two-day ongoing installation where participants are invited to collectively transform a discarded football net into a growing multi-voiced textile intervention. A shared attempt to weave new narratives, futures, and discuss practices of care through playful interactions. Everyone is invited to participate in the intervention over the two-day period. You can find the booth in the foyer.
