The Sustainable Design Summit is returning in November

Registration has opened for the Sustainable Design Summit (SDS), with the event returning to London on 28th November. The inaugural event in 2022 proved a success, sparking conversations about sustainability from experts across the aviation, cruise and hotel design industries. For 2023 the event will take place in the Museum of London Docklands, where designers and specifying experts will engage in talks and roundtable discussions, sharing ideas and philosophies from across the three sectors that can make hospitality interiors more sustainable.

Sustainability is the most urgent topic for interior designers, driven by Net Zero and customer expectations of greener travel. In 2021, the World Travel and Tourism Council established an ambitious roadmap to reach net zero by 2050, including guidelines suggesting sustainable design practices for hotels, airlines, and cruise lines. These three sectors are already making progress, including key industry players setting sustainability targets and initiatives, the adoption of circular product lifecycle schemes, and the cruise interiors community collaborating to establish a Sustainable Maritime Interiors initiative.

The inaugural SDS built foundations for the event, with many meaningful conversations and insights taking place across the day’s plenaries and roundtable discussions (you can read some of the takeaways HERE). The day was different from the standard conference format, with a greater focus on collaboration and in fostering new connections between delegates.

“Fantastic venue, great mix of people and some really interesting speakers. A really timely and important event,” said Ben Orson, FlyZero cabin lead at Orson Associates, of the event. “It was both enjoyable and highly useful for making new contacts and picking up new ideas and insights. I certainly hope to make it a regular item in the diary.”

This year’s SDS attendees will be turning their attention from conversation to action. This aim will be catered for in a curated agenda featuring interactive breakout sessions. In these sessions, representatives of the three industries will converge to hold deep cross-sector conversations, ranging from product lifespan planning to creating a more collaborative supply chain across all stakeholders. The Summit will also host a Product Showcase featuring the most environmentally responsible products within the cruise, hotel and aviation design sectors.

Expert-led conference sessions will navigate a variety of topics including understanding, analysing and using emissions numbers to drive improvement. Delegates will also gain insight into how they can avoid ‘greenwashing’ in marketing and understand the regulations and legislation that products must comply with in order to be truly sustainable. Speakers already confirmed include Zuzana Hrnkova, vice president & head of marketing at aircraft manufacturer, ATR; André Pettersen, president of hotel operations at Hurtigruten Norway; Sam Hall, director of interior design for Europe at IHG Hotels & Resorts; and Siu Lie Tan, founder of Circular Symbiosis.