(3.2) Regenerative Design – The Weltmuseum as a Future Laboratory

In a collaboration between the Weltmuseum Wien and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the ethnological museum is being reinterpreted—not merely as a repository of silent artefacts, but as a laboratory for future, planet-compatible ways of living. By learning from diverse knowledge systems, museum collections can become tools for forward-looking design strategies.

Students from the design theory course Design Revolution Now! at the Angewandte’s Regenerative Design Lab examine around 25 objects from the Weltmuseum Wien collection in order to derive regenerative design principles. At the core lies the question of how humans, animals, non-human organisms, and nature collectively bring worlds into being.

Across four thematic “islands,” established Global North perspectives on knowledge, time, object status, and purpose are questioned and repositioned. Contributions from design, transformation psychology, environmental law, and performance broaden the perspective and invite a radical rethinking of our relationship with consumption, design, and progress.