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This paper examines student learning in the Master of Arts in Sustainable Design course at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London. It considers what designers learn, how they learn and where they learn, in a postgraduate course that seeks to enable them to direct their practice towards sustainability by increasing their sustainability literacy. The paper reviews the learning experiences of students, and the curriculum structures and approaches used to serve those experiences. The story of the course is told here by the course leader of ten years, using student outputs to illustrate the argument made for a sustainable design pedagogy. The key principles of this pedagogy are (1) sustainability is a social, not just an environmental, agenda; (2) sustainability presents us with ‘wicked problems’, which have no right or wrong answers; (3) sustainability-directed design practice arises from the sustainability literacy of the designer; (4) sustainability derives from mindsets and worldviews, not just methods and materials; and (5) sustainability is an emergent property of systems, not a quality of products. This combination has generated a distinctive model of postgraduate sustainable design education, which seeks to equip students with a ‘mastery’ of how to put into practice their own visions of sustainable design.

Open design is commonly seen to derive from the power of the Internet and its associated technologies to distribute the means of producing and reproducing data and content of all kinds - including product designs. Open design connects the generation and transmission of digital content to actual material production and physical embodiment - the making of tangible things. Open design therefore represents an opening-up of the means of production of our material culture - how we make things. This chapter considers products in the open design context more broadly, in relation to considerations of sustainability and practices of social and sustainable design. It takes a broad view of the term 'product'. Object-based designing is not necessarily the optimal way of addressing the 'wicked' problems we face as manifestations of the inherent unsustainability of our existing systems of production and consumption, and our current lifestyles and value systems. The open design context can be seen to extend beyond the current model of the creation of products via an expanded circle of participation, to include the expanded field of design represented by service design and social innovation. This chapter, therefore, considers not simply products in the open design context (in the form of new modes of doing product design) but also products of the open design context. It uses an expanded idea of product which includes any form of designed outcome, physical or non-physical, and an expanded idea of openness which goes beyond the internet- and digitally-enabled production of physical objects. This chapter considers the conventional understanding of open product design. Open design is commonly described as the development of physical products through the free sharing of information. As in the free and open source software movements before it, the internet facilitates the sharing of data, allowing other individuals to copy or evolve the original object. Open product design can be seen as a reaction to the increasingly closed or 'overlocked' design of the product systems presented by leading consumer brands such as Apple. Specifically, define social innovations as new ideas that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. The socially responsive and ecologically aware drives in contemporary design are unified in the formulation of Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. Design for social innovation and sustainability, pursues sustainability goals via the application of the ethos and methods of user-participation and co-design.

As a cultivated form of invention, product design is a deeply human phenomenon that enables us to shape, modify and alter the world around us - for better or worse. The recent emergence of the sustainability imperative in product design compels us to recalibrate the parameters of good design in an unsustainable age. Written by designers, for designers, the Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design presents the first systematic overview of the burgeoning field of sustainable product design. Brimming with intelligent viewpoints, critical propositions, practical examples and rich theoretical analyses, this book provides an essential point of reference for scholars and practitioners at the intersection of product design and sustainability. The book takes readers to the depth of our engagements with the designed world to advance the social and ecological purpose of product design as a critical twenty-first-century practice. Comprising 35 chapters across 6 thematic parts, the book's contributors include the most significant international thinkers in this dynamic and evolving field.

From an environmental and business perspective, things were good. Company executives, however, wondered if they might even be better. Paul Micklethwaite and Anne Chick describe how a creative rethinking of the Remarkable Pencils brand and packaging maintained the corporate commitment to sustainability at the same time that it opened up new markets and expanded sales.

This thesis describes a project investigating conceptions of design in the community of design stakeholders. A 'democratization of design' is identified, in terms of a widened mode of design engagement. The origins of the project are located in the accompanying observation that 'design means different things to different people'. The project has three aims: (i) to establish the contemporary UK context for the social study of design; (ii) to expand upon the identified theme of the democratization of design; and (iii) to empirically investigate conceptions of design in the community of design stakeholders. The first two aims are fulfilled through a review and discussion of existing secondary sources. The third aim is fulfilled by primary research, in the form of an empirical interview study conducted with design stakeholder informants. The interview study embodies an interpretative phenomenological theoretical perspective, and employs qualitative research method. A theoretical sample of 31 interview informants was drawn from five design stakeholder groups: Business; Designers; Education; Promotion; Users. Conceptions of design within the collected interview data are investigated through a template analysis. An analysis of collected interview data is presented in the form of an holistic map or 'template' of the data organized by thematic discussion of 'design'. These empirical findings are presented and discussed narratively and graphically. A total of 41 interrelating 'conceptions of design' are identified. Empirical findings are synthesized with the response to aims (i) and (ii). This generates two main final research outcomes: firstly, a degree of informant scepticism and ambivalence is apparent towards the heightened political, cultural and economic profile for design; secondly, the democratization of design is seen as a worthy ideal, but one which is difficult to realize. In conclusion, a number of further implications of the project are also discussed.

Food-grade titanium dioxide (fgTiO 2 ) is a bio-persistent particle under intense regulatory scrutiny. Yet paradoxically, the only known cell reservoirs for fgTiO 2 are graveyard intestinal pigment cells which are metabolically and immunologically quiescent. Here we identify immunocompetent cell targets of fgTiO 2 in humans, most notably in the subepithelial dome region of intestinal Peyer’s patches. Using multimodal microscopies with single-particle detection and per-cell / vesicle image analysis we achieve correlative dosimetry, quantitatively recapitulating human cellular exposures in the ileum of mice fed a fgTiO 2 -containing diet. Epithelial microfold cells selectively funnel fgTiO 2 into LysoMac and LysoDC cells with ensuing accumulation. Notwithstanding, proximity extension analyses for 92 protein targets reveal no measureable perturbation of cell signalling pathways. When chased with oral ΔaroA - Salmonella , pro-inflammatory signalling is confirmed, but no augmentation by fgTiO 2 is revealed despite marked same-cell loading. Interestingly, Salmonella causes the fgTiO 2 -recipient cells to migrate within the patch and, sporadically, to be identified in the lamina propria, thereby fully recreating the intestinal tissue distribution of fgTiO 2 in humans. Immunocompetent cells that accumulate fgTiO 2 in vivo are now identified and we demonstrate a mouse model that finally enables human-relevant risk assessments of ingested, bio-persistent (nano)particles. Food-grade titanium dioxide (fgTiO 2 ) is a biopersistent particle, but neither the target cells nor the risks of fgTiO 2 are well understood. Here, the authors identify immunocompetent cell targets of fgTiO 2 in humans, most notably in the subepithelial dome region of intestinal Peyer’s patches, and demonstrate a mouse model allowing human-relevant risk assessments of ingested, bio-persistent (nano)particles.