Design for Sustainability : Reflections on a Dynamically Evolving Field

The discourse on sustainability has reached a point where the present common view is that there is a need for radical transformational change in how human society operates. In parallel with the changes taking place in socio-ecological contexts and increased theoretical understanding of implications of these changes, the response from the broader society in general and from business specifically has also evolved in the past decades with an increasing pace. Design as a primary function for innovation in business, and increasingly in government and in other social organizational units including local communities has been engaged with different aspects of sustainability discourse and practice since mid-twentieth century. This chapter presents a short “evolutionary history” of the Design for Sustainability (DfS) field starting from these early days of systematic engagement and provides insights on the emerging directions in the field. We present the DfS approaches that emerged in the past decades, and propose and discuss a framework that synthesizes the evolution of the DfS field, and finally we reflect on the future research challenges of DfS.