The RSD Symposia series was initiated a decade ago in response to the rise of the systemic turn in design programs and studies, and the lack of direction in the literature. The SDA was formed to sustain this movement, to build a base of research and scholarship to support new design theory and practice in complex systems.
2023 marks the first year of Contexts – The Systemic Design Journal, a society-published journal for research contributions in the field.
Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman, after the publication of The Design Way, held a call for a state of the art collection of work in systems thinking and design for a special issue of Design Issues. However, in 2012 there was insufficient development or depth in the field, and the project was abandoned due to the lack of content. Birger Sevaldson at AHO initiated a graduate workshop (RSD1) to share methods and develop scholarship, and in collaboration with Dr Nelson and Peter Jones at OCADU, the RSD series was launched. The Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium started to build a corpus of work in this emerging interdiscipline. With a publishing partnership already in place with Birger’s editorial position in FORM Akademisk, the first special issues (theory and practice) were published following RSD2. After ten symposia, the SDA has a corpus of over 950 proceedings articles, seven issues of FORM Akademisk, two RSD theme issues of She Ji, and several books.
RSD11 proceedings
The 11th Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium was hosted by the University of Brighton, UK. The programme included 122 papers, presented in 30 sessions over four days.
Journal Articles
Several high-quality design journals welcome systemic design and RSD proceedings editors have collaborated on notable issues.
Contexts - SDA Journal
In step with the systemic design's movement toward disciplinary discourse, the SDA's first volume of Contexts – The Systemic Design Journal will be published in January 2023.
Featured books
Recent and upcoming books in systemic design and from SDA authors are featured.
Publishing Spiral
After nearly a decade of the publishing ladder, SDA has adopted a cyclic publishing “spiral” to re-centre the overall approach to systemic design publishing.
SDA Publishing
Thinking of scholarship in terms of a cyclic, spiral process supports a vital emergence of supportive opportunities for scholars.