Design+Science: Reclaiming hope
University of Ljubljana, Academy of Fine Arts and Design (UL ALUO) together with the Association for Culture and Education PiNA, Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Department of Visual Communications Design at the Arts Academy (University of Split) and Institute Joanneum of the University of Applied Sciences Graz, is organizing a fourth edition of Design+Science Summer School. From 18th to 22nd of September 2025 in Nova Gorica, we will gather 21 participants from all over the world to explore the topic of reclaiming hope.
This year, the Summer School is starting with a symposium Reclaiming Hope on 18th and 19th, and continuos with the Design.science Summer school.
We are living through a time of polycrisis, where climate breakdown, rising inequality, and political unrest intersect and shape our daily lives in complex ways. The optimistic future once envisioned by the West in the late 20th century has failed to materialize; instead, we face uncertainty, disruption, and growing divides. This moment calls for a renewed effort to imagine how communities can come together to confront shared challenges. Design and science, as disciplines rooted in imagination and worldmaking, have long offered tools to explore alternative realities. Today, their speculative power is more vital than ever. In a world that insists “there is no alternative,” what happens when we dare to imagine one anyway? What if Utopia isn’t naïve, but necessary?
The Summer school D+S is an experiential teaching methodology that relies on interdisciplinary integration among students from the arts, humanities, and scientific disciplines. This is facilitated through group work, learning through practice, and condensed, interactive learning that also includes peer learning at its core. The structure of the D+S method involves the entire process being accompanied by modern interactive teaching elements, such as excursions, workshops, education through dining, education through experience, viewing multimedia content, and design sprints. The implementation of the summer school is designed so that participants continuously interact with each other, with experts, and with the organizers of the summer school from morning to evening, enabling interaction throughout the whole summer school.
The applications are open until 31th of July 2025. Please apply also to Symposium, as it is integral part of the Summer School.
Follow designscience.school for more information or contact us at design.science@aluo.uni-lj.si.