Sustainable Futures Part 2: Circular Systems

DesignTO is a registered charitable arts organization that believes design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world. From January 23 – February 1, 2026, the DesignTO Festival features 100+ free events across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. Known as Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1 million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported 7+ creatives, and generated $120 million in tourism impact.“DesignTO isn’t just a festival; it’s an anti-loneliness machine,” co-founder Christina Zeidler remarked, underscoring the organization’s power to foster belonging and spark vital conversations about design’s role in shaping a better world.

DesignTO

A free, online panel talk discussing sustainable futures from the perspective of circular systems.

Please join DesignTO for the 2023 series of ‘In Conversation’. This panel talk on sustainable futures brings together three designers: Anna Horváth, Ranee Lee, and Tnachon Benjapipatkul. Together they discuss sustainable futures from the perspective of circular systems, touching on topics such as design for social impact, alternative economies, site-specific adaptations, open-source sharing, and community-oriented interventions. <h3>S﻿PEAKERS</h3>

Anna Horváth is a narrative designer and architect who works in various disciplines of visual arts, as well as exhibition, installation, and furniture design, with a passion for storytelling. She graduated with an MA in Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins - University of the Arts London and has participated in numerous design and architecture projects from small to large scale structures in London, Berlin, Lisbon, Budapest, and Malta. Her portfolio includes projects like the permanent exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, a pop-up store for Hermes Petit h collection in Lisbon, school furniture for a favela in Rio de Janeiro, and her first furniture collection launched during the Paris Design Week. She represented Malta for the ECO Solidarity project at WantedDesign Manhattan and ICFF with her second collection: SORĠI. SORĠI is an outdoor furniture collection for Malta's public spaces made from construction waste to highlight the importance of architectural heritage in Malta. <a href="https://ahaobjects.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">ahaobjects.com</a>

Ranee Lee 郭恩琳 is a product designer and an Associate Professor of Industrial Design at OCAD University. Ranee holds an MA in Education from the University of Toronto on participatory design frameworks, focusing her work in research-creation and curriculum design at the juncture of design and social innovation for lasting change. Ranee’s current design research led her to start <a href="https://www.designwith.ca/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">DESIGNwith</a>, a design incubator for the democratization of design and knowledge through an innovation partnership at the intersection of corporation-academia-community. Ranee is currently on sabbatical and working on a SSHRC funded project on alternative economies in marginalized Canadian communities.

Tnachon Benjapipatkul is a strategic designer and researcher based in London with a background in industrial design from Thailand. She also has experience as a creative graphic designer in the e-commerce startup business across advertising and content on digital and social platforms, marketing, and UX/UI for application and website. Having recently completed a master's degree in Design Management at UAL, which led her to start looking into climate problems through a wider lens, covering various topics such as shifted culture, economic and societal systems. This approach has been applied to her circular economy <a href="https://graduateshowcase.arts.ac.uk/project/314339/cover" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">research</a> to understand how plastic waste became a global environmental crisis and how we can drive change.–﻿–<h3>‘In Conversation’ Series</h3>Spotlighting artists and designers from Canada and the UK, DesignTO in partnership with University of the Arts London (UAL) and OCAD University presents an online series called 'In Conversation'. As the title suggests, faculty, students and alumni from UAL and OCAD will be in conversation with each other and industry experts to discuss contemporary issues, research and creation in design.The ongoing collaboration between UAL and OCAD comes out of dialogue between the two universities, working on common areas of interest such as decolonization and sustainability. Joining UAL and OCAD to present 'In Conversation', DesignTO is a Toronto-based non-profit arts organization that produces Canada's leading and largest annual design festival, showcasing multidisciplinary ways of making and thinking.

Banner image: 'Rita' from the Sorgi Collection by Anna Horváth. Photo: Maria Galea.

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Sustainable Futures Part 2: Circular Systems

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Sustainable Futures Part 2: Circular Systems

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