Sharing Life Centered Design
In September Jeroen left our cosy mountain village to share Life-Centered Design with our peers and students in The Netherlands. First, 50 master students at the beautiful Nyenrode Business University welcomed us for a lively session. On September 15th, we organised a Life-Centered Design co-design session at the Kantoor Karavaan in MijnStadstuin in Amsterdam.
The team existed of 9 designers, system thinkers, networkers experienced in regeneration, new business development, permaculture, human behaviour. This eclectic bunch shared their passion, backgrounds, ideas and gave feedback.
Our learnings from the co-design session:
What Life-Centered Design is can be different for everyone as LIFE in itself is a big word. To regenerate and put life at the centre of what we do, we must deal with our EGOism. We have to let go of what doesn't nourish the wellbeing of the planet and ourselves.
It is the right time to talk about Life-Centered Design. All who were present are working around similar concepts of wellbeing, (eco)systems thinking, new economy etc.
Life-Centered Design is a philosophy on how to approach LIFE on our planet with the use of DESIGN.
As one of our core principles, we talk about empathising with nature. The feedback we got was that we are part of nature, but we don't realise that anymore. When we realise that we are part of nature, we can empathise more easily. This was an interesting thought, so we might change this principle into something like; be part of nature or learning from nature.
The LCD community we are building shares the creation of the philosophy and connects people with similar worldviews, bringing in their point of view, which keeps the community's eyes open.
Watch our video below an find out how we think about Life-Centered Design
Frits Oukes
Ingrid van der Wacht
Xavier Lim
Fieke Sluijs
Thijs Weenk
Pepijn Duijvestein
Roy Straver
Zairah Khan
Christiaan Maats
Thank you so much for participating in the session!
& thanks to the Kantoor Karavaan for providing such an amazing spot for the session
Author: Jeroen Spoelstra
Images: Jeroen Spoelstra