Frame - Issue 159 - Winter 2024/25

Frame, Issue 159

CLIMATE POSITIVITY

One world, infinite potential design solutions 

FRAME’s winter issue looks at how we can build a more environmentally conscious society – together

As I read through all the stories in our sustainability-themed winter issue, I’m struck by a focus on and acknowledgement of the interconnectedness of all life, as well as a strong belief in the role designers can play in preserving and strengthening that connection. Many of the projects featured in the pages of FRAME 159 aim to reconnect people with the land through architecture and design, whether it’s by using local building materials, incorporating endemic vegetation or boosting local biodiversity. Another way of reconnecting people with the land that has proven prominent in this issue is by encouraging them to get involved in the environment, thus fostering environmental stewardship.

This issue shows that fully recognizing the world as an interconnected system can lead to more sustainable design solutions that promote community, wellbeing and regeneration. And that embracing the links between culture and nature can foster sustainable practices in which local and global actions work together, and every part of the ecosystem plays a role in maintaining balance.

Floor Kuitert

Editor in chief

Why an optimistic outlook is key for designing greener futures

Discover four environmentally aware design studios. Find out how the possibilities of biomaterials can be pushed beyond the design industry to promote circularity, how design can play a pivotal role in facilitating a better food future, and more.

Gain insights into what it could mean to construct buildings using materials ‘mined’ directly from the existing site, how sustainable neighbour­hoods could pave the way for a greener future, whether we should be building homes out of cork, and how design can help us live with water, not just fight it.

Learn from global industry leaders how nations that have long struggled with the realities of climate change can move from being living laboratories of disaster opportunism to living laboratories of climate optimism.

Be visually and conceptually inspired by cross-disciplinary creative concepts that show how architecture and design can go further in helping us mitigate the effects of (man-made) ecological emergencies and encourage creatives to act as activists.