Designing with the Planet in Mind

Planetary Design – Between Resilience and Impact Management

We all experience the impact of climate change – and most humans agree that it should be minimised. At best, the way we design should be regenerative — strengthening both natural ecosystems and the resilience of human systems, from rural infrastructures to metropolitan hubs. And the positive news is, many designers do not only talk about it, but are actually working to make it real.

Achieving this means thinking far beyond traditional KPIs. It calls for a fundamental reimagining of how we define success — and how we design for it.

The environmental impact of tangible design disciplines is well established. Industrial design, product design, fashion, and even graphic communication or coding can have tremendous impact of a product’s environmental footprint across its life cycle. There is a parallel field whose influence is often overlooked: intangible design.

Service design and organisational design don’t produce physical goods — but they shape the systems, behaviours, and cultures that drive them. From sustainable coding practices to climate-positive business cultures, the potential for impact here is enormous and it’s systemic.

Design methods such as rapid prototyping, scenario planning, behavioural design and design forecasting are increasingly being used in environmental and policy contexts — not just to visualise futures, but to build coalitions, test ideas quickly, and embed change across institutions.
If design once focused on the object, it now turns to the system.

Building resilience and slowing planetary impact isn’t just a matter of technology. It’s about ethics, empathy, and design.
MADres will provide a doable playbook and insights for taking our planet into account, to create value beyond economics.