Living as we do in the Anthropocene, we are facing climate change and global inequality. These ecological issues require inclusive, transdisciplinary collaborative efforts. A city lab, where all of the participants are experts and amateurs at the same time, provides a ‘safe’ ground for experimentation and the development of new knowledge. City labs are recent phenomena where ‘the city’ is used as a ‘canvas of reality’ for collaboration between various experts, designers and local citizens. Designers take on different roles in these transdisciplinary design practices and have an essential function within these new lab settings.

The emerging fluid boundaries of the design profession create a potential for urgently needed new knowledge in regard to ecological issues, provided that it bears in mind a critical framework. This is essential; otherwise, the fluid boundaries will hollow out the professional standard.

A response from design education is urgently needed; it should implement ecological literacy into the curricula, as well as a critical framework that allows future designers to critically operate within the fluid boundaries of the profession and be experts as well as ‘pro/ams’. Using the pedagogical strategy ‘learning to unlearn’ to create a critical framework, I developed this into the educational project GO TO THE MOON AND BACK. In order to understand the consequences of ‘learning to unlearn’, I tested the workshop at different design academies. GO TO THE MOON AND BACK takes design students on an imaginary trip to the moon. The moon provides a canvas to deconstruct embedded professional knowledge and routines because the elements that we take for granted on Earth (gravity, time, oxygen, life, etc.) are very different on the moon. This makes it possible to deconstruct these fixed notions. It allows us to reflect about Earth, therefore reconnecting us to reality and making it possible to critically examine the elements that shape the professional context, like values, positions, scales, time and perspectives.

External critic: Jan Boelen (Artistic Director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt and of Atelier LUMA, experimental laboratory for design in Arles, France; Head of Social Design Department, Design Academy Eindhoven)