In professional practice, designers engage actively with materials and technologies as means to support interaction between stakeholders through physical or digital artefacts. We regard materials and in broader terms materialities and other more than-humans as ‘vibrant matter’ where materialities are neither exclusively in the manipulative hands of humans, nor are humans exclusively determined by materialities. What we explore, instead, is what humans and materialities might achieve together in envisioning and manifesting sustainable transitions.

Design research has entertained such performative relationships between the designer, materialities, and design outcomes through understanding and challenging the multifaceted perspectives to take. Here, we extend this performative tradition to include questions of how to foster sustainable transitions in society at large.

In this research area, we seek to build knowledge on:
1. How can materials and processes support sustainable transition?
2. How can – and how should – designers and more-than-human actors work together in fostering sustainable transitions?
3. What kinds of new materials and materialities open of for new kinds
designerly engagements?
4. What kinds of new materialities and technologies might aid us in design,
everyday, and organisational life?