If we don't change the fearful way in which we perceive climate change, "we will constantly reinforce this role of the future being fucked," said Disrupt Design founder Leyla Acaroglu at the Design and Climate: Rethinking Our Role conference.

Designer Acaroglu began her keynote by urging the audience of designers to adopt an "ecosystem mindset" when conceiving their projects, suggesting that teamwork is critical to working more sustainably.

"If you don't have that collaborative mindset, you're not really able to get the kinds of systems and changes that we need," said the Disrupt Design creative agency founder.

"An amazing foundation to being able to start something is knowing the hidden impacts of things," she added, referring to the importance of life-cycle assessments (LCA) for products.

The event in London was the first hosted by Design Declares – an organisation helmed by a group of studios, agencies, designers and institutions committed to harnessing tools from the design industry to tackle the climate emergency, founded in 2022.

Acaroglu continued by emphasising that "when it comes to addressing climate change, most of the actions that we need to take are hidden in the supply chain".

"We talk about climate being difficult because it's embedded in absolutely every single thing we do," said the designer.

Acaroglu highlighted eco-anxiety, something she said affects most people to varying degrees, as a global issue hindering progress in sustainable design.

"Eco-anxiety is very close to general anxiety disorder in that you can have physiological reactions like heart palpitations, stomach pain and headaches. But it also generally creates a sense of despair and isolation," said Acaroglu.

"It's a major problem because people don't talk about it. And that anxiety is just going to fester and become more problematic," she added.

"Like how in the past, we didn't talk about general mental health issues. I think people are scared."

"We have to find ways to open the dialogue"

The designer encouraged her audience to confront, rather than avoid, their fears surrounding climate change.

"I have been working in this space for 20 years, so I have a lot of adaptive practices to deal with the torturous reality of, you know, global environmental and social destruction," she quipped.

"We all have to find ways to open the dialogue so that we can move beyond [the anxiety]," added Acaroglu.

"We have this negativity bias, which is activated by the flooding of information on social media. Conversations that are very Doomsday, which is what happens these days," she continued.

"I even do it. Like the casual, 'oh well, you know, climate change is going to get us all!' And I'm not saying that we need to eliminate our casual jokes about the reality of the world," she added.

"But if we don't change the way the brain perceives the threats, we will constantly reinforce this role of the future being fucked. And that is not what we need."

Acaroglu suggested that it is designers in particular who have the necessary skills to enact small-scale change and communicate hope.

"I always say that the first people we need to educate are the people in power. Because it's going to take a long time for the kids to get to those positions," she added.

"People like you have the capacity to design a better future. The design industry has the opportunity to be at the forefront of this transformation."

Disrupt Design method about "disrupting" the status quo

Acaroglu's Disrupt Design method was conceived to help designers tackle issues surrounding sustainability in their practice, and encourages practitioners to "disrupt" the current status quo.

The method is described as a multidisciplinary approach offering "anyone the tools for affecting positive change", using expertise from design-thinking, sociology, sciences and economics.

"I created a design process years ago because I got really into systems-thinking, understanding interconnectedness and dependence of everything," explained Acaroglu.

"It's designed to be a temporary scaffolding that any professional designer can use at the beginning of the transformation from moving from a traditional, linear designer to a circular and sustainable one."

The Design and Climate: Rethinking Our Role conference took place last month at Hackney's Yorkton Workshops, home to industrial design studio Pearson Lloyd.

Studio co-founder Tom Lloyd, Andy Galloway of New Citizen Project and founder of Design for Social Change Priya Prakash preceded Acaroglu's talk as speakers at the event on how designers can tackle climate change. The audience was invited to participate in an interactive workshop after the discussion.

The photography is courtesy of Design Declares.

Design and Climate: Rethinking Our Role took place at Yorkton Workshops, 1-3 Yorkton St, London E2 8NH, on 14 June 2024. See Dezeen Events Guide for information, plus a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.