Relay Conversations: Attuning to When Relations Are Ready to Move
- Ph.d. studerende
-
Alexandra Harder Lindek
- Projektperiode
- 2022 - 2026
- Hovedvejleder
- Sune Klok Gudiksen
- Projektvejleder
- Morten Krogh Petersen
- LAB
- LAB for Bæredygtighed og Design
- Samarbejdspartnere
- Esbjerg Municipality and employees from Esbjerg Town Hall
Peter Larsen Kaffe and Löfbergs
Region Midt and citizens from three rural communities
About
Sustainability transitions are often described as large-scale changes driven by plans, strategies, or solutions. In practice, however, change emerges through relationships, everyday situations, institutional conditions, and ongoing negotiations between people, places, and materials.
The project explores how conversations can open up different ways of understanding and engaging with situations in transition, and how they can be carried forward as situations continue to unfold.
Purpose
The approach is a way of working with how conversations can be connected over time, taking different forms depending on the situation. Ideas, questions, and stories are carried forward between conversations, sometimes as propositions or reflections that open new possibilities.
The research explores how conversations can continue beyond individual events and be carried forward across situations as change unfolds. The aim is to better understand how design can sustain transformation through attentiveness, trust, and ongoing engagement with unfolding situations. In this sense, the project approaches sustainability not only as something to be designed, but as something that must be sustained through relations over time.
“As we wander together, open to the world, so too our minds also wander in unforeseen ways.”
Methods and expected results
Through long-term engagements, conversations, everyday encounters, and ongoing correspondence, the project develops and examines the relay conversation approach as both a way of conducting inquiry and a way of supporting transitions in practice.
The findings show that meaningful transformation emerges through interdependent relationships between people, practices, and contexts. The research highlights attunement as a key designerly capacity: the ability to sense when relations are ready to move and to work with what emerges through care, listening, and attentiveness to unfolding situations.
“Sustainable transformation unfolds through relationships. This project explores how designers can attune to when relations are ready to move.”
Articles and PhD thesis by Alexandra Harder Lindek
- Lindek, A. H., & Petersen, M. K. (2023). Pleasures, participation or practices? Unpacking the black box of designing in and with organizations. In S. Holmlid et al. (Eds.), Nordes 2023: Linköping University.
https://doi.org/10.21606/norde...
- Lindek, A. H., Petersen, M. K., & Gudiksen, S. K. (2023). Relational frictions in circular economy ecosystems: Designing for transformative futures. Strategic Design Research Journal, 16(3), 295–314.
https://doi.org/10.4013/sdrj.2...
- Lindek, A. H., & Poulsen, M. (2025). Designing for relay-tional co-becoming. In E. Brandt, T. Markussen, E. Berglund, G. Julier, & P. Linde (Eds.), Nordes 2025: Relational design, 6–8 August, Oslo, Norway. Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2025.21
View the full PhD thesis below:
