New European Bauhaus:
How Do We Design the Irresistible Circular Society?

This is both a built environment and a cultural issue. Through the initiative, we formed three project groups with participants from different fields. They’ve been working on the following three challenges set in a co-creation session early in 2020:  

• Social values and communities
• City nature, resilience, and biodiversity
• Resource loops and zero waste

This preparatory work is done in an open process where the final outcome is to be defined after the New European Bauhaus call is published. Our approach to the openness of the process is based on the method of design-driven missions.

The Approach: Design as a core resource

The core of the design-driven mission’s approach is to challenge one’s own assumptions, bring empathy into play, provide space for experiments, and “rehearse the preferred future” through prototypes. Successful missions can be pursued via three different but interrelated dimensions: 

• Setting direction (where to go)
• Mobilizing ecosystems (with whom) 
• Building capacity (how to get there)

Our mission is to design irresistible circular societies – to accelerate the green transition based on shared desires and values rather than need and necessity, by engaging citizens, businesses, and organizations in co-design processes with tangible results applicable at scale. 

We have designed a mission and collected a treasure chest of ideas for initiatives through several co-design events and workshops with citizens, businesses, and organizations. 

Since February 2021, we’ve developed and facilitated two workshops, three project group meetings, an international co-design workshop, and a youth event.

• The partner group mobilized 150+ relevant organizations and companies by inviting relevant stakeholders to our events
• We co-created 20+ initiatives that embrace inclusion, aesthetics, and circularity
• We created a common language for stakeholders in different fields and a shared mission – to design an irresistible circular society

The chosen initiatives have significant impacts while building capacity in the ecosystem of stakeholders by breaking down professional borders and silos, hosting new dialogues across sectors and disciplines, and providing a space for new partnerships.

Our team has developed and facilitated the activities using design processes and collaborative design thinking. Participants have been encouraged to think freely and develop new insights and languages across different sectors.

Design tools such as ‘How might we…’ and the ‘Concept poster’ have challenged participants to look differently at how they can contribute to a more inclusive future.

The process itself has been designed to continuously open ideation and then consolidating the ideas and concepts in collaboration with representatives across the many disciplines, industries and geographic locations who participated to ensure inclusion across age, social status, and sectors. Transparency and broad inclusion have been vital elements as this process focuses on interdisciplinary interaction across citizens and generations in an accessible way.

Our next step is to summarize all inputs from the process. We’ll then apply to become one of the five lighthouses initiated by the EU Commission as pilot projects for the green transition.