Your design-led research inquiry – activated during our two-week design sprint – will investigate and propose ‘design recipes for action’ to inspire responsible, beneficial, socially and ecologically sound relationships with our planet’s atmosphere. How can design intervene to reveal, explore and make ethically active our relationship with the air we all breathe?
Through design research you will propose provocations and improvements to the symbiotic relationship between air, humanity (as a diverse species) and the numerous occupants and systems with which we share planet Earth.

You will research and design with young designers from four different design teaching institutions around the world. You will take part in workshops with guest researchers and designers, artists and scientists who use their research practices to interrogate the question of air. You will engage with art-led investigations, scientific understandings and of course the potential for design research to reveal insights into the contemporary world.
You will start with a two-week intensive design sprint with other design students from London, Barcelona and Vietnam. During this you will develop your ‘recipes for action’. The intensive brings together designers from all over the world with a shared concern for planetary health, and designing for social change. We will guide you to research, reflect and share other examples of practitioners, researchers and communities of practice. 

Your design-led propositions become ‘recipes for action’, investigating and provoking humanity’s relationship to air. 
You will produce short videos to clarify your proposed recipe before publishing your idea, together with others, as ‘Ideas for Humanity: A Cookbook for Planetary Health’, ready to be actioned by communities across the world. 
Together we will plan and produce an exhibition of installations demonstrating the recipes for Melbourne Design Week. 
As speculative and critical design your work may utilise data visualisation, illustration, creative coding, typographic investigation, animation, or many of design strategies and techniques to explore and communicate your group’s recipe for action. 

Brief 1: Design Sprint leading to your group’s ‘recipe for action’. A two-week intensive design sprint, with two hours together online every evening in collaboration with a group of design students studying in London, Barcelona and Vietnam. You’ll develop and propose a ‘recipe for action’. We’ll have talks from leaders in this area, exercises and workshops to build context, research ideas and develop a proposal. Your proposal will be presented as a short video. After this design sprint you will work independently on the other briefs.  
Brief 2: Share your recipe for action. This is a publication design task to design a hero image, instructions and infographics that clearly communicate your group's recipe. These will be added to the common design studio website along with your group’s proposal video. 
Brief 3: Melbourne Design Week Exhibition. We will explore the space we have to exhibit in and materials you can work with to design and create a physical installation for MDW that engages people with your group’s recipe for action. 
Brief 4: Studio Knowledge Object. During this Studio, from week 1 to 12 you will be supported to reflect on your experience of this studio thoughtfully. Based on these reflections you will create a presentation in response to the questions: What was it about, what have you learned, what might you do with this new knowledge?

There are four assessment tasks for this studio:
Brief 1: A design sprint. Together you’ll propose an idea as a recipe for action. 
Brief 2: Share your recipe for action. To be added to the common design studio website. 
Brief 3: Melbourne Design Week Exhibition. Design and create an installation.  
Brief 4: Studio Knowledge Object. Reflect on your experience of this studio thoughtfully. 

commondesignstudio.net Projects from previous studios 

WHO Solutions for Air Pollution (infographic) 

WHO Video on Climate Change and Health  

UN Climate Action  

University of the Arts London / London College of Communication, UK
Elisava / School of Design & Engineering, Barcelona, Spain 
RMIT University Vietnam / School of Design and Communication, Vietnam

IMPORTANT - Schedule of classes
There is an intensive design sprint - with classes every evening Monday to Friday 7:00 - 9:00pm during weeks 2 & 3 (6 to 17 March).
Classes are timetabled for: (TBC) 
During other weeks classes are timetabled for:
- Tuesdays 6 - 9pm
- Thursdays 4 - 6pm

2023 is the fourth iteration of this studio in a series titled: Ideas for humanity: a cookbook for planetary health. We start with a team design sprint producing a video of your idea of a recipe for action. After that, you design the instructions as a recipe for our website. Then create an installation and exhibition for Melbourne Design Week to engage others in your recipe.