A world that
needs less

A small studio building for a living planet

Limoli is a Norway-based studio designing and building technology under a single constraint: sustainability. We take degrowth seriously, in the sense Jason Hickel lays out in Less is More: an economy that grows for its own sake cannot stay within the limits of a living planet, and well-being does not depend on endless expansion.

As members of that planet's ecosystem, we act with respect and responsibility toward all living beings, minimize harm wherever we can, and are open about the trade-offs when we cannot.

GDP still decides what counts as growth

Gross domestic product adds up the market value of everything an economy produces in a year. Governments, markets and headlines treat it as the measure of progress: when it rises, things are going well.

What it leaves out is what that output takes from the planet. A forest counts when it is cut down and sold, not while it stands. Mining, manufacturing and shipping all raise GDP, whatever they extract and leave behind.

For decades the promise has been that economies would decouple: keep growing while using fewer resources. The chart below puts that to the test, setting global GDP against the material footprint, the raw materials extracted to meet everything we consume, both indexed to 1990. If decoupling were happening, the material line would flatten while GDP kept climbing. Instead they rose together: between 1990 and 2017 the world economy grew 124%, and the materials it took grew 114%.

That is why growth is not our goal. We ask what a product genuinely needs to take, and design for the least.

Products that help the world need less

We design and build products that help the world need less: less energy, less material, less attention, less waste. We use technology to solve real problems, not to create artificial needs, and we want people to see the impact of what they use so they can make informed choices.

Before we build, we ask whether something needs to exist at all. When it does, we design for the smallest footprint that does the job, for durability and repair over novelty and churn, and we publish what we measure so anyone can hold us to it.

Integrity over interest

Sustainability is not a marketing label to us; it is the constraint everything else is designed within. Guided by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we seek to make a meaningful, long-term contribution to a world that takes less and shares more.

When doing the right thing and doing the profitable thing pull apart, we choose the right thing. We act with care, take accountability for our choices, and adapt when we learn we were wrong.