UG design education for sustainability: designing for planet and for life

There is a clear need to augment and expand Design for Sustainability (DfS) and the ecological design thinking that supports it. In the UK, the Design Council’s Design for Planet and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA)’s Design for Life programmes both support this agenda. As design educators who have spent our careers advancing ecological and sustainability literacies in Design Education for Sustainability (DEfS), we enthusiastically welcome the momentum generated by both programmes. The Design for Planet mission aims to upskill 1 million UK designers in green design skills by 2030. The RSA’s Capabilities for Life Framework presents life-centric mindsets that navigate different perspectives, knowledges, and competences. The Design Council’s Design for Planet has been highly visible in the online design ecosystem and is the theme for the World Design Congress London 2025. We suggest that this prominent institutional attention to DfS and DEfS with strategic visions for transformative learning can help design educators carve out the necessary space and time for sustainability in the curriculum. In this paper, we signpost key aspects of a prospective undergraduate DEfS programme with reference to Design for Planet and Design for Life. Learning is scaffolded by iteration of key DfS concepts and approaches as students journey through three years and become more capable of engaging with complex problems. DEfS is a process of continually revisiting themes, going a little deeper and wider each time. Students develop capacities to make informed decisions with ecological design knowledge and ecological design thinking alongside other critical green skills. DEfS creates foundational knowledge to mitigate against further environmental harms to reduce both extraction of natural resources (with associated disruptions to ecosystems) and pollution (including greenhouse gas emissions) while simultaneously adapting to environmental challenges and ecological crises.