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PurposeCurriculum design is often a challenge. It is particularly so when the subject is sustainability, which is an aspirational but contested concept, draws on a range of disciplinary insights and is relatively new to university curricula. There is no single “right way”, or even agreement across the disciplines that inform the collective enterprise about general approaches to sustainability curricula. The likely content is ill‐defined and spans departmental units and budget areas in most traditional universities. Like other societal and institutional attempts at realising sustainability, curriculum design for sustainability is beset by difficulty, yet an essential intellectual activity. This paper aims to focus on these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe paper compares actual curriculum development processes for “sustainability” in two very different Australian universities, as studied using participant observation and qualitative interviews.FindingsThe paper draws out some of the common challenges of interdisciplinary curriculum design for sustainability, and identifies four principles transferrable to other institutional adaptation settings. It argues that curriculum design is an opportunity to develop collegiality, and further advance the problem area under discussion.Originality/valueCase study research is often difficult to generalise to other settings. The opportunity to observe two sustainability curriculum design processes, operating in parallel, provides transferrable insights.