This year, the World Design Organization (WDO) hosted its 34th World Design Congress (WDC) in London from September 9-10. The Ohio State University’s Department of Design is a member of the WDO, and the conference was attended by Department Chair Fabienne Münch. 

More than 50 years after the Congress was last held in London in 1969, the 2025 conference ran alongside the London Design Festival and showcased some of the best design innovation that British designers had to offer. 

The event took place at the Barbican Centre and welcomed more than 1,200 participants along with speeches from visionaries in design that centered around the Congress’ theme “Design for Planet”, highlighting sustainability and regenerative design practices. 

During the conference, Dieter Rams was honored with the World Design Medal. Rams’ legacy is deeply entwined with sustainable design practices. This is especially prevalent in his iconic “Ten Principles of Good Design” which stresses straightforward, long-lasting and environmentally friendly design as indicative of a “good” design. 

As many featured designers pointed out, the reality of design today does not always take these principles into account. Some designers are under the pressure of working in the present and find themselves at risk of losing sight of the future. 

Sustainable Development Goals 

During the conference, Ben Sheppard, a member of the Board of Trustees for Design for Good, gave an update on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Design for Good is a non-profit-organization that targets one sustainability goal each year with aspirations of “improving lives through human-centered design” with their team of 1,600 designers across 30 countries. 

According to the 2025 Sustainable Goals Development Report, although the goals have achieved a significant impact, “the current pace of change is insufficient to fully achieve all the Goals by 2030”. 

While at first, reaching the Goals may not feel like a design-oriented issue, in a world with such rapidly changing cultural norms, most design ends up being degenerative and destructive to our environment. 

Most agree that this change needs to take a top-down approach. Rowan Williams, the Creative Director of Panasonic Design, and Takehiro Ikeda, Director of Panasonic Design London, spoke at the WDC about the company’s integration of cleaner design solutions. 

Their talk focused on Panasonic’s role in defining what quality means today, designing holistic systems that focus on recycling older products and working with energy experts to design cleaner energy within company practices. 

Regenerative Design in Cities 

It isn’t only companies that have to change, but the construction of the cities we live in. According to a 2018 press release, World Bank Group found that global waste was expected to increase by 70% by 2050 due mainly to “rapid urbanization and growing populations”.

Norman Foster, English architect and founder of Foster and Partners, spoke about the role cities play in pollution. He emphasized the importance of walkable cities as the best livable solution for densely populated areas because of lessened CO2 emissions from cars. 

Additionally, Thomas Heatherwick, founder of Heatherwick Studio, highlighted a study from the University of Sussexthat found that infants between four and nine months old preferred looking at complex, highly stylized architecture rather than simplistic designs that are now popular. 

By investing in these “boring” buildings, designers and clients have invested in a future where these will be torn down to make way for something hopefully more visually pleasing. This practice of demolition inevitably leads to climate change. 

However, the reconstruction of a city’s entire infrastructure is both highly inconvenient and highly counterproductive to sustainable design. Heatherwick suggests that forming a connection between passersby and architecture doesn’t have to start from scratch, it only takes about 30 to 40 feet. In an interview with WIRED Heatherwick says, “I believe this epidemic of not caring is caused by a lack of visual complexity...Vision tends to focus on the first 30 to 40 feet upwards of any built environment. That’s where I believe we need to embed character back into building design”.

Designing Digital 

In addition to rapid urbanization, it is no secret that the world has become rapidly digital. It’s easy to think that waste and sustainability are issues that only impact designers in the physical world however, digital design plays just as big a role in environmental sustainability. 

According to Website Carbon Calculator, “the average web page produces approximately 0.36 grams CO2 equivalent per page view. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that’s 43 kg CO2 per year”. 

Luckily, according to BBC, there are plenty of ways to optimize your website to be more eco-friendly. Things as simple as reducing image sizes, removing autoplay features on videos and simplifying the user’s overall interaction with the site can help to reduce carbon emissions. 

The best thing that anyone can be when it comes to their website is attentive. It is important to monitor your site’s carbon emissions to understand where and how to scale back. 

Making Regenerative Design Fair for All 

One of the most important things to consider when developing plans for regenerative/sustainable design is waste management.

Leyla Acaroglu (PhD), a designer and social scientist, spoke at the WDC about the effect of waste on less fortunate communities. She highlighted waste trafficking, the practice of illegally disposing of hazardous waste from higher-income countries into lower-income countries. 

This practice heavily disadvantages the communities living in those countries. Additionally, waste trafficking leaves the demand for raw materials the same, actively preventing the transition to a circular economy that encourages the re-use of materials. 

Acaroglu spoke on the importance of “giving nature a voice in design” and the movement from “profit centric to human centric to life centric to nature positive design” to combat problems with waste management. 

The Big Picture: Legacy and Community 

Building a community of likeminded designers is paramount to the construction of a more sustainable tomorrow. 

The implementation of widespread regenerative practices in design begins at the individual level with designers building communities of young people and outsiders to the corporate machine. Only in the development of that community, will we begin to see large-scale change in business and legislation to prioritize sustainability. 

While the future may seem difficult to face, there is always time to implement real change by partnering with individuals whose goals align with our own when it comes to sustainability. On a panel with climate activist and author Tori Tsui, journalist Max Fraser and musician Brian Eno, the three discussed what kind of legacy designers can leave. Eno said, “We are already in a process of collapse, a catastrophe. What are we going to rebuild from the rumbles? Don’t try to do it yourself. Find the others to partner with you. How do we not go back to business as usual? Design beginnings, not endings”