Abstract:

Approaching sustainable development from a global perspective, there is a very clear need of shifting the consumption and production patterns of industrialized, emerging and low-income countries. This shift or transition will have to respond to the challenges of radical reduction of resources consumption and emissions, not to mention socio-ethical aspects such as poverty reduction and increase of well-being. Within this framework there is an emerging understanding that a great deal of this change can be directly linked to decisions taken in the design phase of products, services and systems (1), and design schools have therefore to be able to provide design students with a broad knowledge base, as well as effective tools so a new generation of designers can have an active role as catalysers and enablers of the transition of our consumption and production patterns.

Under this perspective, there is a pressing need of mechanisms that act at the education level, enabling design educators in industrialized, emerging and low-income countries to share knowledge in this field and come out with a design education agenda able to respond both to local and global sustainable development issues.
Along this direction this paper will present the intermediate results of the Learning Network on Sustainability (LeNS) project, Asian-European multi-polar network for curricula development on Design for Sustainability focused on system innovation, financed by the European Commission under the Asia-Links programme (2).
LeNS is a mechanism to develop and diffuse system design for sustainability in design schools in a transcultural perspective, where design educators in industrialized and emerging countries share knowledge and come out with a design education agenda able to respond both to local and global sustainability challenges.
The main output of the project will be the Open Learning E-Package (OLEP), an open artefact that allows, through the web, a decentralised and collaborative production and fruition of knowledge. It can be described as a modular e-package of teaching materials (texts, slide shows, audio, video, etc) and tools for designers, that design educators (but also students, designers, entrepreneurs and interested persons/institutions) worldwide will be able to download (free of charge), modify, remix and reuse (copyleft). Apart from the contents, the same LeNS web platform is realised in an open-source and copy left ethos, allowing its download and reconfiguration in relation to specific needs, area of interest and interested partners.
The paper will present the LeNS project and the achieved intermediate results, and in particular will describe the first version of the OLEP, underlining the derived benefits in terms of development and diffusion of knowledge (in DfS).

(1) System design is understood as both the design of the mix of products and services jointly capable of fulfilling a given demand, and the design of the interactions among the stakeholders involved in the offer
(2) The Asia Link Programme aims at promoting networking between higher education institutions in Europe and developing countries in Asia, through to human resources and curriculum development actions. LeNS is a 3 years project started on 15th December 2007 (for further information see www.lens.polimi.it)

Keywords:

Learning network, sustainability, didactic materials and tools, learning objects, e-learning, collaborative knowledge production, open-source, copy left, design.