The event takes place every first Thursday of the month during the semester from October through December and from February through June and is open to PhD students at the Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art (HSLU), the National Institute of Design (NID), and other interested guests and PhD students from other universities.
Upcoming Event
Zhe Sun and Sophia Guggenberger – Regenerative Design: From the Coral Reef to the Tooth Brush
Thursday, 6th June 2024
12:00 - 13:15 (CET)
15:30 - 16:45 Uhr (IST)
Can design start from the ecosystems the products/materials/services will be embedded in rather than from anonymous material samples? Within a workshop format developed at the Institute of Design Research Vienna, Zhe Sun and Sophia Guggenberger are exploring how design processes, actions, and practices can be thought of in order to imagine a productive (non-extractive) practice of collective making together with multi-species living systems.
During the lecture, they will share their experience on experimenting with the workshop format about regenerative design, which they have developed to accompany the traveling exhibition ‘Coral Reef - Regenerative Design’. Together with students and university staff, they reimagine the design process of an everyday object: the toothbrush.
Zhe Sun and Sophia Guggenberger were both research assistants at the Institute of Design Research Vienna.
Zhe Sun is a multidisciplinary design researcher and currently a Ph.D. candidate at Tongji University and a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research topic is about defining an alternative framework for design collaboration within the context of ecological crisis.
Sophia Guggenberger has an educational background in design from the London College of Fashion and the University of the Arts Berlin. As an independent designer, she is researching production as a tool for transformation. Her work focuses on sustainability and the development of multi-perspective solutions for the conception and manufacturing of products with a holistic approach to social, technical, and material aspects.
If you have any questions regarding the lecture series or the PhD programme please share them by mail to
esi@hslu.ch.