Learning Stories
Past and Future of Learning Environment Design
A 35-Year Inquiry into Humane Learning Design, Care Ethics, and AI
About the Exhibition
This exhibition presents a 35-year inquiry into learning environment design, culminating in the articulation of Humane Learning Design—an approach grounded in care ethics and responsive engagement with technology.
Humane Learning Design extends human-centered approaches by foregrounding relational responsibility, plurality, and ethical responsiveness in the design of learning environments.
Rather than a personal retrospective, it traces a continuing question:
How do we learn together, and how do we live together?
The work spans the founding of Future University Hakodate in Japan, the Hakodate International Science Festival, engagement with AI research, and dialogue with scholars in ethics of care and human-compatible AI. In 2025, the Kyoto Prize recognized both AI research (Shun-ichi Amari) and care ethics (Carol Gilligan), symbolically reflecting the intersection explored here.
Humane Learning Design understands learning as relational. It emerges through the interplay of space, activity, and community, and through the practices of questioning, dialogue, and action.
In an era when AI increasingly performs optimization and decision-making, the design of learning becomes an ethical act. This exhibition invites reflection on what we entrust to technology—and what must remain human responsibility.
March 2026