The course is suitable for all design topics including architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture and is open for all programmes at AHO. The course has two main themes to choose between but even individual programming is possible. The course is well suited as preparation for the diploma.

Design for a complex world

Designers today are confronted with an increasing complexity. Constantly new fields and tasks are opened up for designers, and the importance of design increases. Designers address complex socio-technical problems, both in the development of solutions and processes. To be better prepared for this development, designers must learn to handle greater complexity, understand larger contexts, learn more about the consequences of our choices, both for businesses, customers, individual users as well as society and the environment.

Systems thinking

A deeper understanding of complex processes is called systems thinking. In Systems Oriented Design (SOD), we have developed an approach to systems thinking that is especially developed for practicing designers. It is the designerly approach to systems.

SOD is part of a larger movement with many approaches called Systemic Design (systemic-design.net). This movement was started by SOD teachers here at AHO and other people mainly from Canada, India, Italy and the US.

Read more on
www.systemsorienteddesign.net

www.systemic-design.net

MODUL 1: Design for very complex systems

There are many partners in the course. The topics range from, the public sector, services and organizations to products, architecture, sustainability and democracy. Students can choose one of the partners or self-program.

Who should take this course?

This is the course for you if you wish

• - to take up a challenge to work with very complex problems,
• - to develop the designers' abilities of holistic thinking,
• - to have a strategic role in your future work as a designer.
• - to combining multiple perspectives and diversified views, as well as conflicting interest, such as sustainability while maintaining profit, or working with dialogues while maintaining diversity
• - be part of a circular economy transition 
• - to learn to design as nature: (1) with materials and products, and (2) on a systems level in organizational economic transitions
• - to acquire methodological, contextual, technical, and social skills in circular regenerative design, i.e. life cycle analysis, engineering design with renewable materials, circularity indices, transitioning of a tourism service economy, and alike
• - to develop the designers' ability to integrate holistic thinking and circular design in a real-world context of mountain economies, tourism, and global environmental change
• - getting better at handling different perspectives, interests and values

This course is for you if you…

• - is independent and manages to create own problem statements
• - is capable of living with uncertainty and does not depend on everything being planned for you.
• - is willing to take in new knowledge and to read independently.
• - likes to work with difficult things that give resistance
• - is good at taking the initiative and seeking guidance and criticism
• - is able to critique there and then and actively participate in the design of the course along the way

If you feel that you do not meet these requirements you should think carefully, but if you are willing to improve in the above requirements then you are most welcome.

The course is open to all students at AHO and it endeavours to think in transdisciplinary perspectives and to develop new perspectives or take positions that are not covered by the AHO disciplines. Examples include organizational design and design for action (action design) or entirely new perspectives.

 If you are in doubt, don’t hesitate but contact birger.sevaldson@aho.no

MODUL 2: Circularity in Mountain Systems
Systemic relations from products to behavior to land use and regional (circular) economy

Mountain regions are complex social-ecological systems, vulnerable to global environmental change, often dependent on single industry sectors like tourism, forestry, or mining. How to design a more resilient, regenerative mountain economy? How to create circularity in mountain regions, with a more diversified, flexible, connected economy, where (winter) tourism is one pillar of a circular economy? What is the role of the consumer, the tourist, the products we consume, the choices we make? How do product design, skis, mobility, local identity, and a circular economy in mountains correlate? How can designers design for circularity? Mountain systems are intrinsic part of Norwegian landscape, culture, economy, history, and future. They experience change the first and the worst. They are sink and source of resources, livelihoods, travelers, sorrows and dreams. They are extreme environments and antennas for future developments.

In this course, we explore and design circular mountain systems, that are more resilient and regenerative. We design for circularity from two different directions, in two groups:

Group (1) designs from the “zoom in” perspective, the detail, the material, the resources, via the product “ski”, and zooms out to its use in mountain tourism;

Group (2) designs from the “zoom out” perspective, the mountain region, the local economy, the landscape use, from the current linear to a future circular economy, and zooms in to the different economic activities and consumer behavior. This is where groups (1) and (2) merge their work on circularity of mountain systems; the systemic product designer and the systemic service-landscape designer cooperate “bottom up” and “top down” to develop a common systems strategy communication map for circular mountain systems.

This course in Circular Mountain Systems Design (as part of the general AHO teaching offers in Systems Oriented Design SOD) provides a rich and highly complex learning field, starting with a circular designed product, its materiality and supply chains (group 1), then expanding to the user and his/her interaction with the skis and natural snow environment, mobility behavior and general consumption, to the natural landscape and mountain regions with their nature and economy in transition towards circularity (group 2).

Please do not hesitate to contact tobias.luthe@aho.no for questions.