Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it shapes the world we live in. And right now, we are part of a climate change crisis. Over 40% of global CO₂ emissions come from constructing, using, and demolishing buildings and infrastructure.

This means that we need to radically shift how we think about materials, lifecycles, and responsibilities and that begins with how we teach and learn design, so we favouring a new field on sustainable and circular design and construction

With CiD, we’re not just raising awareness — we’re redesigning the learning process itself. We combine action-research with education to close the gap between what’s taught and what’s needed in the real world. The goal is to empower designers, architects, and urbanists to not only imagine circular futures but to prototype them, test them, and collaborate across institutions to make them real. How we are doing that?

First, by fostering cross-institutional collaboration among CiD 11 partners working across three key dimensions.

  1. Urban Transformation toward climate-neutral and sustainable cities, with partners like LUH in Germany, Architektūros Fondas in Lithuania, the Ersilia Foundation in Spain, and the Architects’ Council of Europe in Belgium and ALDA, European Association for Local Democracy (France)
  2. Bio-based Innovation for Buildings, with IAAC in Catalonia, Materiom in the UK, and CNR in Italy.
  3. Design for the Circular Economy, bringing together UNIGE in Italy, ARCES in Palermo, and the Tallinn Creative Incubator in Estonia

Secondly, we’re embracing a transdisciplinary approach, anchored in six observatories, three at the European level and three at regional or national scales.

These observatories bring together stakeholders who have been involved in every phase of the project: from defining the challenges, to identifying skills gaps, evaluating new educational formats, and assessing the circular design projects developed by our students,  ensuring a continuous dialogue between education, practice, and innovation ecosystems.

Third, we’re using a Challenge-Based Learning framework to shape the educational programme.

Inspired by the theory of experiential learning, rooted in the work of John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Kurt Lewin.  CBL empowers learners to engage with complex, real-world problems.

And these quotes beautifully capture the spirit of CBL:

‘Give pupils something to do that demands thinking — and learning will follow’ — Dewey.
‘Play is the answer to how anything new comes about’ — Piaget.
And one of our favourites: ‘If you truly want to understand something, try to change it’ — Lewin.