History and Development

SiD was born from a personal journey. As Tom Bosschaert describes in the book's preface, the framework grew out of a decade-long search for a practical way to act on the complexity of societal systems.

Origins

At 17, Bosschaert enrolled at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands to study Industrial Design Engineering. He expected to build things that helped people. Instead, he found a field focused on consumer products and gadgets, disconnected from the systemic challenges he cared about: hunger, poverty, climate change, water scarcity.

Disillusioned, he moved to Perth, Australia to study architecture. There he began reading widely across ecological design, land ethics, chaos theory, and complexity thinking. The central insight that took hold: small actions can produce large systemic effects. But controlling those effects requires understanding the system as a whole.

Early Development

In the summer of 2001, Bosschaert started work on what would become SiD. The initial framework was personal, a way to structure his own thinking about systemic impact. From 2005, SiD was formally developed as a step-by-step process for generating sustainable, symbiotic solutions.

He continued his study and research at the Yale School of Architecture, where he drew on the expertise of colleagues across disciplines to refine the approach. Professor Willis Jenkins' classes on consequentialist and deontological ethics became a lasting influence on how SiD handles value judgments.

Growth Through Practice

SiD grew through daily use at Except Integrated Sustainability, the consulting practice Bosschaert founded in 1999. Over two decades, the framework expanded to include stakeholder participation, co-creation, and multi-factor optimization.

Through more than 700 projects worldwide, including work with IKEA, Heineken, Schiphol Airport, the City of Amsterdam, and the TU Delft, SiD evolved from a personal tool into a complete framework covering theory, method, process, and tools.

The Book

Bosschaert began writing the SiD Omnibus in the summer of 2009. The book was published in August 2019 as a 460-page reference covering the full framework. Key contributors include Renske Kroeze (early-phase editor), Emily Vierthaler (editing), Damon Taylor, and Hanna Maas (hand-sketches throughout the book).

Open Source

SiD is published under a Creative Commons license and made freely available. The framework's tools, diagrams, and materials can be shared and adapted. As Bosschaert writes: "I hereby invite everyone who'd like to participate in expanding SiD to do so, and this is the reason why I have made SiD open source."

The ThinkSiD platform continues this principle: all learning content is free and open, supported by donors and the community.