Innovation & Technology Product Design
Noah Albrectsen
I’m a multidisciplinary designer with a focus on sustainability and craft.
My design practice builds on radical sustainability, center norm critical and beyond-human perspectives, think in ecosystems and value planet over profit.
Having studied my Master’s in European Design in Glasgow, Germany, and Sweden, I have a well-rounded educational background.
Designing for Life Affirmation
Kånken Breath – a Living, Breathing Backpack
A Life Affirming take on Kånken Classic, Kånken Breath is a Living Artefact that, through the photosynthetic microalgae printed on the hemp fabric, is able to purify air as it moves through the world. It is based on Kånken Classic’s pattern, removing the front pocket and adding a removable bottom of stronger hemp fabric for added durability.
If the whole world consumed at Denmark’s current rate, we would need 4,2 Earths’ worth of resources. In 2023, Stockholm Resilience Centre noted that we have already crossed six of nine Planetary Boundaries globally, leaving us simultaneously on the cusp of a crisis that will lead to collapse, and giving us the opportunity to intervene for the benefit of planetary and collective human health.
This project proposes a new path to help facilitate the transition towards a brighter future: Designing for Life Affirmation. Designing for Life Affirmation is an emerging practice I have developed, moving beyond Human Centred Design, Designing for Life Affirmation dissolves the notion of centering humans in decision-making. Emphasising the affirmation of life at its core, Designing for Life Affirmation embodies a deep-rooted appreciation of the interconnected, reciprocal relationships that make up ecosystems. While related practices like Regenerative Design and Biomimicry exist, Designing for Life Affirmation as a distinct practice has not been established or codified prior to this project. For this reason, I have developed a set of principles for Designing for Life Affirmation, which can be studied on my website.
Using Copenhagen Fjällräven backpack users as a case study, this project explores Life Affirming Artefacts as disruptive innovation. Harnessing the rich potential of vernacular and novel biomaterials, Life Affirming Artefacts foster reciprocal relationships of care, interdependence, and intra-action through everyday interaction. What novel social and cultural practices might be cultivated that could bridge the gap between our present and a Life Affirming future?
Project Links
Creating Collaborative Futures
Creating Collaborative Futures: Collective Decision-making for the Energy Transition – was run in collaboration with the Collective Intelligence team at NESTA, the UK’s innovation agency, and focused on exploring the future of sustainable energy.
The brief invited the five Masters of European Design students to explore and envision how people and technology could collaborate to enable informed decision-making in energy systems that benefit communities and the environment over the next decade. To achieve this, the students employed one of NESTA’s tools, HACID.
HACID stands for Human and Artificial Collective Intelligence for Decision-Making and is a hybrid technology that aggregates artificial intelligence and crowd-sourced expert input. HACID supports decision-making for complex, open-ended problems like those in the energy sector. Its goal is to provide multiple suggestions and insights to help navigate these challenges.
Over the course of the intensive collaborative project, the students envisioned a 2035 future world vision and developed individual works that come together to form an interconnected system for communities to approach complex decision-making related to the energy transition.
