Design for Peace Ecosystems (D4PE) is an international research and education network exploring how design can contribute to the construction of peace ecosystems, making structural conflicts in urban contexts visible and enabling spaces for dialogue and collective transformation. The project connects three partner universities — Politecnico di Milano, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá) and PUC-Rio (Rio de Janeiro) — in a distributed research and teaching programme across three academic years within the Erasmus+ KA171 framework.

The project is grounded in the conviction that design can operate as an infrastructure for participation and social innovation: collecting and synthesising data, developing operational tools, and co-producing knowledge with the communities and institutions involved. Urban food systems serve as the common terrain of inquiry, as it is here that structural inequalities — in access, recognition, and decision-making power — are most visible and politically contestable.