Designing Decolonial Futures
INFORMAZIONI SULL' EVENTO
How have colonial histories shaped the designs we create today?
Educator and designer Danah Abdulla cuts right to it: every choice we make as designers is political."With every design, there's potential not just to exclude, but to oppress. Every design vocabulary has its history and context.”
We're taught design through a narrow canon, mostly European and North American male voices dictating what's "good" or "bad." This sidelines non-Western cultures and alternative ways of knowing. Recognizing these standards aren't universal, that's the spark of decoloniality.
So, how do we shift our mindset and practices? Anthropologist Dori Tunstall reminds us: “decolonization is a journey. Stay curious, keep learning what we haven't lived.”
Join the conversation at our next Climate Designers Milan event on March 26th with our inspiring speakers.
Let's evolve together.
Check out our agenda!
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AGENDA
Welcome
Climate Designers Milan
Dipartimento di Design – Politecnico
Talks
The Colonised Imagination: Unlearning the hidden foundations of design | Carolina Cardoso, Futurist & Foresight Strategist
Designing in Relation: Decolonising the way we design futures | Alexanda Whitcombe, Regenerative Designer & Founder of Kootuia
Q&A
Netweaving
Getting to the Design Social Club 
IMAGE USE DISCLAIMER
Please note that Climate Designers Milan will be taking photos and/or videos during the event. CDM may use these photos/videos for social media publications and corporate presentations. If you, as an attendee, do not wish to have your image used, please notify the CDM organizers.
Lineup
The Colonised Imagination: Unlearning the hidden foundations of design | Carolina Cardoso, Futurist & Foresight Strategist
You think you have opinions. A sense of what is beautiful. An instinct for what is refined, rational, modern, possible. But what if those thoughts were installed? This talk moves through five centuries of a system designed to make one civilization's categories of knowledge, beauty, and power feel like nature itself, and traces how that system never ended. It simply changed infrastructure. From colonial territory into economic architecture, into design education, into aesthetic canon, into the algorithms deciding what you see, want, and conceive as real. This talk revisits the foundations of that system and asks how one worldview came to define what we recognise as rational, modern, and desirable. It traces how these assumptions moved from colonial territories into design schools, aesthetic canons, and the infrastructures that still shape perception today. Rather than offering solutions, the talk proposes a shift in awareness, inviting designers to question the invisible frameworks that structure what we believe design is, what it should do, and whose futures it serves.
Designing in Relation: Decolonising the way we design futures | Alexanda Whitcombe, Regenerative Designer & Founder of Kootuia
Decolonising design is not only about changing what we create. It is about transforming how we understand our relationships with land, knowledge, and each other. When these relationships are truly valued, the way we design inevitably shifts. Over the past decade, Alexanda has explored what it means to practice decolonising design and innovation. As a recovering industrial designer with Indigenous Māori and Polynesian heritage, he shares insights from his work on local government initiatives and complex, multi-stakeholder projects shaped by intergenerational visions. What biases do we carry as designers, storytellers, creators, and artists? Which dominant narratives do our solutions continue to reinforce? And who are we ultimately designing for? Designers, creators, storytellers, innovators, and policy writers play a critical role in imagining the futures we build. This talk invites us to reflect on the power dynamics we enable, the narratives we centre, and the responsibilities we hold in shaping more relational, inclusive, and long-term approaches to designing climate futures.
SPEAKERS BIO
Carolina Cardoso is a Foresight & Business Strategist, Futurist, and Specialist in Sustainability and Regenerative Economics. With over 20 years of experience in multinational companies such as Luxottica and Hewlett-Packard, I have led high-performance teams in 17 countries. She has solid experience managing brands like Ray-Ban, Chanel, Oakley, Sunglass Hut, and Lenscrafters with a special focus on retail and consumer behavior. She has launched pioneering educational initiatives at the intersection of design and wellness, influencing industry standards. Champion climate action within the design community, advocating for and leading discussions on the role of creatives in environmental stewardship. Carol's strategic thinking combined with a passion for multicultural environments, consumer insights, future thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurship behavior helped her acquire a unique grasp to generate value for brands and stakeholders.
Alexanda Whitcombe is a regenerative designer, futures strategist, and former university lecturer. He is of indigenous Māori descent, with ancestral ties to the Pacific Islands of Niue and Rotuma and heritage to the United Kingdom. Alexanda is the founder of Kootuia, a social impact consultancy whose name reflects its mission—to interlink, connect, and forge relationships. Through Kootuia, he works to create lasting intergenerational impact across urban regeneration, circular systems like the food sector, and education - empowering the next generation to shape a more sustainable and connected world.
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