Circular Design Strategies
Overview
Circular Design strategies should be thought about throughout a Life-Centered System Thinking (LCST) process. They become most important during the brainstorming, co-designing, and evaluation phases. We’ve compiled of the best Circular Design strategies for you to consider and employ the best one(s) for your design interventions. Circular Design also incorporates the long-standing knowledge about the natural world and resilience from Indigenous cultures. Their perspectives into design will prioritize place-based environmental stewardship.
🌿 What is Circular Design?
Circular Design follows how nature works. This is why nature is always a stakeholder in Life-Centered Systems Thinking. Waste in nature is food. Healthy soil makes for healthy waterways and consequently healthy plants, animals, and humans within living cycles (a circular process that repeats). Circular Design is the opposite of planned obsolescence creating objects and ephemera that can be returned to the soil or industry for reuse. Here are some important Circular Design strategies you should use in your LCST process.
- Dematerialization - Reducing the amount of materials, weight, and size of the object.
- Design for Disassembly - Creating so the object can be easily taken apart and recycled back into the technical waste stream.
- Design for Longevity - Designing for a timeless aesthetic which is also durable.
- Equitable Design - Making so the object is available to all without reinforcing social stereotypes.
- Indigenizing Design - Incorporating Indigenous perspectives, values, and worldviews into a Westernized context or system.
- Modularity - Designing a reconfigurable product that can adapt to different spaces with parts that are replaceable.
- Product Service Systems (PSS) - Creating a product leasing model so it can be returned after end of life.
- Product Stewardship - Designing a service where the full life-cycle responsibility of the product is owned by the company who made it.
- Repairability - Creating an object that can be easily taken apart with quick access to parts for repair and replacement.