How can designers work with nature rather than against it? What strategies help in considering the lifecycle effects of designs, to reduce negative environmental impacts? In this session of the KDI Exchange, Jonee Kulman Brigham (senior research fellow, Minnesota Design Center) and Teddie Potter (director of the Center for Planetary Health and Environmental Justice) consider infrastructure changes that respect the interdependence of human and natural systems. Ultimately, they seek to change mindsets that cast humans as being separate from the rest of nature.

The KDI Exchange occurs biweekly on Fridays, 11 a.m. to noon. These dialogues are open and informal, conducted via Zoom to maximize inclusion and reference-sharing for building community and enriching design thinking and practice.

Jonee Kulman Brigham, AIA, LEED AP O+M, is a senior research fellow with the Minnesota Design Center at the College of Design and an Institute on the Environment Fellow. As an architect, artist, educator, and previously an energy consultant, Jonee has focused her work on sustainable design and environmental education. Jonee brings a design thinking and arts approach to affecting systemic change with a particular interest in the paradigms that drive systems. In her interdisciplinary graduate work at the University of Minnesota, she developed the Earth Systems Journey curriculum model for art-led, experiential, environmental education which uses embodied, interactive, and social ways of knowing. Jonee co-leads Design for Community Regeneration, a participatory, game-like, geodesign process that uses the power of GIS-informed decisions to help communities plan for their desired future.

Teddie Potter is deeply committed to climate change and planetary health education. Dr. Potter is the inaugural director of the Center for Planetary Health and Environmental Justice at the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota and a fellow in the Institute on the Environment at the University. She is a board member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments and a member of the American Academy of Nursing Environment and Public Health Expert Panel. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee of Columbia University’s Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education, and the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA). She serves on the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Decarbonizing the US Health Sector; the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM); and the Climate Crossroads committee of NASEM. Her most recent work is founding with the International Council of Nurses, Nursing for Planetary Health, a global nursing movement.

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