Design for the Planet Seminar Series: Transforming Sustainability Action
Join us for an excellent talk by industry lead Juan Pablo Astolfo, as well as panelists Ve Dewey (Design Council Expert) and Ying Ji (University of Cambridge), for a session bridging industry - academia - design perspectives for a sustainable planet.
About this session: The inaugural session of the Design for the Planet seminar series focuses on how sustainability action is designed, delivered, and transformed in practice. Both design and the environment is understood not as backdrops, but as primary stakeholders shaping how problems are framed, priorities are set, and systems take form. Moving beyond awareness and intention, the session brings together leading voices from design, technology, and policy to examine how climate ambition can be translated into meaningful intervention, and why design must be engaged early if sustainability goals are to lead to real-world impact.
The discussion positions design as a critical capability for shaping human and ecological systems together, aligning stakeholders across sectors, and enabling action at the scale and speed the climate crisis demands. Through a combination of strategic, systemic, and practice-based perspectives, the session explores the skills and approaches required to move from vision to implementation. Speakers will reflect on how design can support effective sustainability interventions, from reframing challenges in planetary terms and redesigning infrastructures that interact with land, resources, and communities, to embedding environmental responsibility within organisations, institutions, and everyday decision-making. In doing so, the session sets the foundation for the rest of the series, establishing a shared language and direction for the conversations, tools, and practices that follow.
When: Thursday 19th of February
15.00 - 17.00 (Keynote and Drinks Reception)
Where: CRASSH meeting room (Alison Richards Building) on the Sidgwick site.
The Design for the Planet Seminar Series is run in partnership with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) and Design Council and organised by Ve Dewey (Design Council), Ramit Debnath (University of Cambridge), and Yen-Chin Wu (University of Cambridge).