Believing in the importance of supporting knowledge and policy production in the field of design and architecture, the Istanbul Design Biennial hosted a research programme, with the kind contributions of the US Embassy in Ankara, and in partnership with the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, to work collaboratively with a selection of four women designers, curators, researchers, thinkers (two from Turkey and two from the US) who are actively investigating geopolitics to build new tools and systems for social, economic and mostly environmental resilience.

The objective of the program was to inquire the connection between the oppression of women, POC, LGBTI+, and the destruction of the environment, while revealing design's potential to instigate new processes, and spark global changes stemming from social, political and ecological endeavors.

The project aimed at enabling researchers to contribute to establishing a different relationship with nature through collaborations across borders, institutions, and disciplines. It also aimed at advancing and stimulating knowledge exchange in the field of design, and contributing to creating a sustainable common living space, in empathy with nature and all species. The program fostered collective research methodologies as well as forms of solidarity and responsibility within the design field that could lead not only to ecological but also spatial, political, and social transformations.