In 2021 Sønderborg Municipality aims to develop Denmark's first Center for the Sustainable Development Goals: A place where people, flora, fauna, and sustainable technology thrive in harmony and balance with each other according to UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This thesis explores how the center for SDGs can be designed as a Living Lab that engages citizens to translate and negotiate the SDGs to their own everyday life and create a behavioral change over time. The thesis gives an in-depth insight into the challenges that appear when communicating the SDGs to citizens and working with them in a local setting.
An analysis of citizens' current relation to the area and the SDGs is performed through the perspective of Actor-Network Theory, unfolding various matter of concerns and setting the foundation for understanding the field. This illustrates how current relations attached to an area can create potential controversies when changes are imposed in the establishment of new actors to the area.
Additionally, the thesis explores how the SDGs can become tangible through the explorative and experimental properties of a Living Lab. To support this, we will move away from designing things to investigate how ‘Things’ can make actors gather, negotiate, and experiment with the SDGs. Through a participatory design approach, essential elements of a Living Lab are explored and developed with citizens and employees of Sønderborg municipality. Here the framework of negotiation spaces is utilized to analyze how the design team has staged, facilitated, and re-framed interventions performed throughout the thesis. In addition to this, the use of online mediums as tools for online participatory design is explored and reflected upon, giving recommendations to how peers can approach such a process in the field of participatory design.
The participatory design process results in the concept proposal: "The battle towards the Everyday Goals," illustrating how the Center for SDGs as a Living Lab can be developed at Kær Vestermark and a strategy for further work.

Keywords: Designing Things, Sustainable Development Goals, Living Labs, Participatory Design, Co-Design, Negotiation Spaces, Tangible Interactives, Experimental Platforms, Sustainable Development Goals in a local context, Scenarios