wp3 / DC3

Investigating and amplifying practices for circular design

As climate change compels food systems to adapt and urban populations continue to grow, cities become critical sites for examining how fair and sustainable food transitions might unfold (FAO et al., 2023). Exploring the complexity of food consumption – how people purchase, prepare, and consume food – is increasingly relevant in this context, particularly in the domestic sphere where most daily choices occur and significant waste is produced. In these domestic spaces, food choices are rarely purely functional; they are culturally situated acts entangled with identity, memory, and meaning-making.

Yet, such cultural complexity remains significantly underexplored in dominant transition discourses in food systems. Policymakers and businesses largely apply circular economy approaches that treat food as material flows to optimise, overlooking its cultural embeddedness (Corvellec et al., 2022). Instead, they frame food as a “commodity” and individuals as “consumers” (Jackson et al., 2021). Framing food transitions as technical processes governed by market logics implicitly determines only “one possible future” for sustainable food systems. This universalist position (De Bruin et al., 2024) contrasts sharply with the incommensurable food realities lived by individuals.

These realities are entangled in intersectional positionalities and multiple ontologies that position food far beyond materiality, relating it complexly to culture, ecology, economy, and justice. The paradox of this universal approach is that rather than eliminating injustices, it systematises them by obscuring the multiple intersectional food ontologies existing in urban contexts. Alberto’s research aims to explore these contradictions by investigating how food-related cultural practices might inform more just and inclusive circular transitions.

To investigate and integrate studies of co-design, circular design and climate transitions to develop a basis for just circular transitions.
To develop case studies of examples of circular design.
To synthesise results and produce a conceptual framework for designers, businesses, government and civil society organisations to amplify opportunities for circular design.

RMIT University (Australia, 6 months) with local mentors to expand and contextualise the practice-based research and creative method development toward just and democratic transitions.
Holon (Spain, 6 months) to develop case studies and analysis investigating how practices for circular design are amplified and institutionalised, including Holon’s projects.