191 examples

Projects, places and practices that show the Framework at work, drawn from the book and its sources.

A man in glasses and a tan jacket speaking into a microphone, gesturing with one hand.

"Brown Economy" (Pavan Sukhdev)

Brown economy is Pavan Sukhdev's term for the fossil-fuel-driven economic model that treats nature's services as free and measures progress by growth alone. Sukhdev, an economist and former UNEP Green Economy Initiative leader, set it against the green economy he argued for in his work and in his book Corporation 2020.

A medieval illuminated manuscript illustration of robed figures arranged in circular bands around a central enthroned figure.

"Declaration by Design: An Invitation to the New Liberal Arts" (Richard Buchanan)

Design theorist Richard Buchanan's 1985 essay "Declaration by Design" argued that everything designers make, from objects to systems, is really an argument about how people should live.

A large red circle ringed by ten smaller ones, each naming a property of hard-to-solve problems.

"Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning" (Horst Rittel & Melvin Webber, 1973)

In this 1973 paper, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber introduced the term wicked problem, arguing that many social policy issues cannot be defined, tested or solved the way science solves tame, technical problems.

A simple systems diagram showing a box labeled "P" with input, output, and feedback arrows.

"Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System" (essay by Donella Meadows)

In this essay, systems scientist Donella Meadows ranks twelve places to intervene in a system, from simple numerical tweaks up to the most powerful levers: a system's goals, its underlying paradigm, and the ability to transcend that paradigm.

A mother wearing a breast pump sits on the floor playing with her baby and toy ducks.

"Make the Breast Pump Not Suck" Hackathon

United States

Held at the MIT Media Lab in September 2014 and again in 2018, this hackathon brought mothers, engineers, designers and healthcare practitioners together to redesign the breast pump, positioning mothers as core experts rather than subjects.

"Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" (Richard Buchanan, 1992)

Richard Buchanan's 1992 essay in Design Issues framed design as a liberal art spanning symbols, things, actions and environments, and introduced placements as a designer's tool for finding new possibilities. It brought Rittel and Webber's wicked problems into design theory to explain why design problems are indeterminate.

An aerial view of a concrete dam with three spillway gates releasing rushing water into a forested valley.

50,000 large dams

The International Commission on Large Dams counted about 5,200 large dams worldwide in 1950 and lists more than 58,000 today, most built in the last sixty years. The World Commission on Dams documented their toll on displaced communities, fragmented rivers and trapped sediment.

A bar chart comparing damaged and intact portions of ecosystems, mostly shown in red, alongside small nature icons.

70% decline in wildlife populations since 1970

WWF's Living Planet Report 2022 found an average 69 percent decline in monitored vertebrate population sizes between 1970 and 2018, with freshwater populations down 83 percent. The 2024 edition, covering through 2020, put the average decline at 73 percent.

A nighttime market stall displaying rows of small painted clay figurines and miniature houses.

Abstracting Craft (book by Malcolm McCullough)

In Abstracting Craft (MIT Press, 1996), Malcolm McCullough argues that computation had become a medium rather than a set of tools, and that giving form with software is a craft practiced through hands, eyes and mind.

A tiered arrangement of black planter boxes mounted on a wall, each holding leafy green plants.

African Design Review

Africa

Mpho Matsipa, a South African architectural scholar and curator at the University of the Witwatersrand, has built platforms for critical African design discourse, including Studio-X Johannesburg and the African Mobilities exhibition. A publication under the exact name African Design Review could not be confirmed.

A grid of dozens of small black symbols on a pale blue background, each in its own numbered square.

Afrikan Alphabets (Saki Mafundikwa)

Zimbabwe

In Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika, Zimbabwean designer Saki Mafundikwa used archival and field research to document historically marginalized African writing systems, their origins, cultural meaning and aesthetics.

Two men standing amid smoke and burning wire near piles of tangled cables.

Agbogbloshie, Ghana

Ghana

Agbogbloshie in Ghana is one of the toxic dumpsites created when electronic waste is exported to the Global South, causing severe environmental damage and health harm, including elevated cancer and neurological disease, among nearby residents.