Design + Science Summer School 2025

The fifth edition of the Design + Science Summer School will take place in EPICenter in Nova Gorica, bringing together 21 participants from around the world to explore the topic of "reclaiming hope" and reflect on the possibilities of a better future.

From 18 to 22 September 2025, EPICenter in Nova Gorica will host a summer school entitled Design + Science.

This year’s Design + Science will kick off with the Reclaiming Hope symposium on 18 and 19 September, followed by a three-day summer school program.

We are living in a time of polycrisis, where climate change, rising inequality, and political unrest impact our everyday lives in complex ways. The optimistic future once envisioned by the West in the late 20th century has failed to come true—instead, we are facing uncertainty, disruption, and growing divisions. This time calls for an effort to imagine how communities can come together to confront these shared challenges. As disciplines rooted in imagination and worldmaking, design and science have long offered tools to explore alternative realities. Today, their speculative power is more vital than ever. What happens in a world that insists that "there is no alternative", when we dare to imagine one anyway? What if utopia isn’t a naïve way of thinking, but a necessity?