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Loughborough University - www.lboro.ac.uk

The Department of Design and Technology at Loughborough University has a multidisciplinary staff and about 400 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Since the 1930s, the Department has been involved in design education and has extensive prototyping resources. Every student is involved with major designing and making projects and many of these are linked to companies and outside organisations.

One of the Department’s particular areas of expertise is sustainable design, led by Dr Tracy Bhamra and Dr Eddie Norman. All the undergraduates study sustainable design in core modules. About 50 Year 2 students take specialist options in this area each year and undertake sustainable design projects linked to companies. There are also on-going research projects concerning sustainable design.

The Department’s expertise relates to product design in a northern hemisphere context, and consequently this is also the area in which the Department has offered briefs for the Sustainable Design Awards. The open-ended context has been recommended as the ‘3Rs’ for sustainable design for many years – reduce, reuse, recycle.

Loughborough University students have undertaken projects in these and similar areas in the past and we would be pleased to support students taking the Sustainable Design Awards. Some general areas might include concept designs, selecting materials and appropriate technology, prototyping strategies and product evaluation.