Designing Sustainability Transitions

IO-MI-222

What would a sustainable future look like? How do we get there? And how can we design for it? Developing your own answers to these three questions will be the core of this minor.

Sustainability will be approached from both environmental and social perspectives. The underlying philosophy of this minor is that, in order to design for sustainability, you need to consider the whole system and go beyond resource efficient products and services.

For whom?

Engineering, architecture, and design students from universities worldwide on a level comparable to that of the TUDelft.

What will you learn?

You will learn about different topics and concepts that are central to designing sustainability transitions, such as societal change, transition management, complex systems, design approaches, systemic design, social design, the circular design strategies, design for behaviour change, futuring, materials, values and ethics, sustainable entrepreneurship and co-creation.


This minor provides an opportunity to experience real interdisciplinary teamwork as you will work together with fellow students from other faculties and universities. Teams will be able to think beyond their field of expertise, acquire creative design skills while sharing their disciplinary knowledge. You will critically reflect on the ethical considerations of design for sustainability and gain an unique experience working on leading topics with some frontrunner companies and larger organisations.    

  • You will analyse the different elements of complex sustainable systems, in the context of the challenge of addressing societal needs within our planetary boundaries.
  • You will evaluate processes of change towards a sustainable future at different scales, from individual users to complete societal systems.
  • You will form arguments for your own perspective on how transitions could take place.
  • You will gain unique experience in carrying out project work in multidisciplinary teams for external, real-life clients.
  • You will apply communication, entrepreneurship, and collaboration skills towards sustainability challenges in the real world.

Course overview

The minor Designing Sustainability Transitions comprises the following courses:

Register for this minor

Minors of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering are open only for students from academic programmes in the third year of their Bachelor studies.

Do you want some more information about this minor?
Visit the lunch meeting on 4 April from 12.45 – 13.30 in the IDE Arena!

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