Be realistic – design the impossible!

A look at history shows us: design begins with a dream. A dream of a better world. In his 1890 novel News from Nowhere, British designer and socialist William Morris envisions an egalitarian society based on social community and ecological sustainability—where design plays a central role as a transformative force. For Morris, design was not merely about shaping objects; it was fundamentally about improving adverse living conditions. This lecture explores Morris’s approach of combining traditional craft methods with progressive visions of the future, and illustrates how socio-ecological discourses continue to shape design to this day and have ultimately informed Transformation Design. Design history offers many examples of those who stood up for what seemed impossible, bringing Morris’s dream of “how we might live” (1884) within reach.