The Transdisciplinary Living Lab Model (TDLL)
175
within a set period of time. The TDLL proposes that sustainability-oriented challenges are an on-going process of learning and adaptation, rather than an end goal.
In addition, the TDLL blog encouraged students to build on previous iterations and
learning of the project, rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’ each time the subject is
offered.
3.1 PHASE 1 Entering the Living Lab: Scale Matters
The initial phase and entrance into the TDLL had two goals. Firstly, to encourage
students to articulate a form of teamwork and collaborative research that was appropriate for team members and in the process, identify individual strengths, weaknesses
and potential contributions each participant might make to the project. This required
students to reflect on and document how they planned to collaborate across design
disciplines and as a group, and how they would approach decision-making and collaborative research. This process was formalised in an agreed upon document which
clearly defines how team members will work together, overcome inherent challenges
and jointly formulate problems and potential solutions.
The second goal of this phase was to encourage students to identify their own
individual contribution to food waste on a daily basis, both on-campus and within
their own homes. In the process, they further developed design skills such as critical self-reflection, systems diagramming/thinking, self-auditing and environmental
auditing. Students conducted self-audits of all the organic waste streams they produced within a 24-h period and reflected on embedded habits, values and beliefs in
managing waste streams more broadly. While auditing is a practice conventionally
associated with accounting, it was adopted as a way for students to document and
categorise their waste as individual components inseparable from broader food waste
systems. This facilitated students to identify and position themselves as complicit
actors, as well as agents of change, in the food waste system. Design skills were used
in the self-auditing process with mapping, photographing, documenting, quantitative
calculations and journaling of food waste produced. This sensitised students to the
theme of the studio and primed them to identify food waste on campus as part of a
broader urban food system ecology within which they are intimately involved and
implicated. From a transdisciplinary perspective of skills development, self-auditing
exercises prime students to question what ‘valid data’ are, and whose perspective
should be valued. Focusing on these skills helped students to recognise that ‘digging
where you stand’ is a good way to start being an active political agent when dealing
with complex sustainability problems (Fry 2009, p. 224).
Beginning the TDLL at the microscale where individual practices associated with
food waste production are revealed, encourages students to realise that scale matters
and that local dynamics and cultural practices are crucial to investigate when aiming
to intervene in a system. The first step in comprehending the enormity of the food
waste challenge and its environmental, social and economic impact is to reflect
on one’s own contribution to the problem under investigation. The weekly audits
175
within a set period of time. The TDLL proposes that sustainability-oriented challenges are an on-going process of learning and adaptation, rather than an end goal.
In addition, the TDLL blog encouraged students to build on previous iterations and
learning of the project, rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’ each time the subject is
offered.
3.1 PHASE 1 Entering the Living Lab: Scale Matters
The initial phase and entrance into the TDLL had two goals. Firstly, to encourage
students to articulate a form of teamwork and collaborative research that was appropriate for team members and in the process, identify individual strengths, weaknesses
and potential contributions each participant might make to the project. This required
students to reflect on and document how they planned to collaborate across design
disciplines and as a group, and how they would approach decision-making and collaborative research. This process was formalised in an agreed upon document which
clearly defines how team members will work together, overcome inherent challenges
and jointly formulate problems and potential solutions.
The second goal of this phase was to encourage students to identify their own
individual contribution to food waste on a daily basis, both on-campus and within
their own homes. In the process, they further developed design skills such as critical self-reflection, systems diagramming/thinking, self-auditing and environmental
auditing. Students conducted self-audits of all the organic waste streams they produced within a 24-h period and reflected on embedded habits, values and beliefs in
managing waste streams more broadly. While auditing is a practice conventionally
associated with accounting, it was adopted as a way for students to document and
categorise their waste as individual components inseparable from broader food waste
systems. This facilitated students to identify and position themselves as complicit
actors, as well as agents of change, in the food waste system. Design skills were used
in the self-auditing process with mapping, photographing, documenting, quantitative
calculations and journaling of food waste produced. This sensitised students to the
theme of the studio and primed them to identify food waste on campus as part of a
broader urban food system ecology within which they are intimately involved and
implicated. From a transdisciplinary perspective of skills development, self-auditing
exercises prime students to question what ‘valid data’ are, and whose perspective
should be valued. Focusing on these skills helped students to recognise that ‘digging
where you stand’ is a good way to start being an active political agent when dealing
with complex sustainability problems (Fry 2009, p. 224).
Beginning the TDLL at the microscale where individual practices associated with
food waste production are revealed, encourages students to realise that scale matters
and that local dynamics and cultural practices are crucial to investigate when aiming
to intervene in a system. The first step in comprehending the enormity of the food
waste challenge and its environmental, social and economic impact is to reflect
on one’s own contribution to the problem under investigation. The weekly audits