Sustainable Design

The idea of sustainable design may make you think eco-friendly design but sustainability is more than a green trend. In some ways it is ancient wisdom to live in a thriving relationship with the earth, in terms of its natural resources and human life for the long term. The ancient great law of the Iroquois summarizes sustainable design: "In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation."

Importantly, sustainable design is not a separate category for design it is part of every category. Thinking sustainably means having a global view of communication, fashion, objects and environments.

Sustainable design includes:

Respect for human thriving in relation to earth's life

Consideration of the past and the future

Consideration of the environment

Consideration of cost

Consideration of waste

Consideration of any type of damage or consequence

Innovations in old materials

Innovations in survival

While some sustainable thinking seems like common sense, the industrial revolution placed a greater emphasis on speed and efficiency. The effects of manufacturing were not fully understood until the mid 20th century. There were 2 pivotal books that contributed to the collective consciousness of sustainable thinking. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring of 1962addressed the negative influence of pesticides on birds. E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful of 1973 addressed the trend of "bigger is better" and asked businessmen to re-think their priorities. Together these books raised mass awareness.

Another small but valuable voice in 20th century sustainable consciousness was Ken Issacs. Using wood 2X4's Issacs started the adaptable living space “urban nomad” movement that is also called “loft.” He eventually created “microhouses” which were simple wood frame and plywood temporary structures that were also biodegradable.

In 1997, The Kyoto Protocol established a global referendum on sustainability. The United Nations called a conference on the stabilization of greenhouse gasses by international businesses, mandated by countries. The United States signed the agreement but has not put it into action. China is the largest emitter of gases and excess overall, they claimed to making reforms but have increase emissions every year. The problem is not just the governments but the businesses who are supposed to be moderated by the governments. Many countries are starting to impose a Carbon tax upon businesses that refuse to reduce emissions.

When we think of sustainability today, it involves all aspects of life and consequently as aspects of the design process and production.

The great “global responsibility”: Now it is no longer enough to be designer, you have to be a responsible global designer. Responsible global designers are first and foremost caring about the lasting influence design has on future generations. Some designs take from the earth and do not give back like de-forestation, fossil fuels, etc. Some designs are just one hit wonders, following trends, rather than understanding enduring human needs. Design businesses can also care for sustaining humanity, caring for employees and making use of people who need jobs in Africa and elsewhere.

Examples of green businesses are companies involved in the sustainability aspects of food, energy, water, waste management, and other environmental issues. The hierarchy of environmental strategies is to first reduce, second reuse, and third recycle.

#1. Reduce

•Designers reduce by being more efficient in both the production and the packaging

•Whole Foods is a good business model as they reduce cost and energy required in transportation and distribution by including local produce and products

•Zap! Is “Zero Air Pollution” a consumer available, all electric car company that also has a solar option to reduce energy one consumer at a time

#2. Re-use

•Designers re-use by utilizing existing materials, fabric scraps, material excess, anything before it is thrown away, repurposing something like old clothes for cleaning cloths is a basic example

•Re-use is preferable to re-cycling because it takes less energy.

•Production can re-use glass bottles. Machinery can have renewed parts. Businesses that re-use are HP and Mac cosmetics.

#3. Re-cycle

•Environmental design is creating new products that will have less impact and can be recycled with little energy. Plastic water bottles are a a poor environmental choice as they require a lot energy to recycle and virgin plastic is required for new bottles which requires energy and material to manufacture. T

-Surfboards of recycled glass, and “green” friendly foam

Atelier Yanagi, 100% recycled green surfboards

Sustainability also includes the work force!

Patagonia in Ventura, California takes its materials seriously and has increased sustainability in production. They also urge all employees to take it outside. The office is stocked with surfboards, climbing gear, bikes and even a yoga studio. Patagonia's flex time philosophy lets Patagonians escape from their desks to the sun and surf anytime of day -- as long as the work gets done, no one cares when you clock in or out. If you're wondering where the best breaks or swells are that day, simply call reception. It's their job to direct your call and tell you where you catch the best surf. This keeps employees active and reduces sick days which reduces costs.

One position on sustainability is that it starts with safety, though most people do not think of safety until it doesn't work.

The Factor of Safety is what designers consider in the creation process. Sometimes designers must use more elements than necessary to provide safety, such as materials with greater tensile strength or attachments like seat belts. Normally good design exceeds the minimum factor of safety and is stronger than the publicized limit. Read 14 Universal Design Tips in Safety.

Forgiveness is another important design element. This means considering that users will make mistakes. In software communication design forgiveness is allowing users to "undo" and using "confirms" before proceeding. For objects, items like plugs prevent dangerous plugs of greater power and the golf club offers a curve that makes up for the faults in the golfer's swing.

Victor Papanek was a philosopher of design and a promoter of social and ecological considerations. He wrote that "design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments (and, by extension, society and himself).” He was both a professor and a working designer for UNESCO, Volvo and others. He wrote "Designing for a Safe Future" as a manifesto for sustainable design. He suggests that design must be positive and unifying, addressing human needs, culture and ecology. Design should also benefit design, bringing lasting innovation.

Some advance considerations for designers:

•The choice of materials…what resource supply and effect?

•The manufacturing process…impact?

•Packaging…what’s necessary…?

•Transporting the product

•Final waste

•Production of greenhouse gases/ozone gases

•Relation to acid rain

•Habitat/species interference

•Harming life

•Polluting air, soil, water

•Noise pollution

•Visual pollution

Finally Papanek addresses the problem of packaging. Not only is there a habit toward too much packaging but now packaging is a product, especially in luxury brands that use packaging as an extension of excess.

Two packaging solutions, above the biodegradable "Globe Guard" aiming to replace peanuts and below Pangea Organics has created packaging you can plant, containing embedded spruce needles that will grow a tree.

Tony Fry explains in his essay "Sacred Design," that we have a sacred resource of the earth. There is nowhere for us to be other than here. The ecological crisis has arrived by design, as design is between creation and destruction. Design has focused on aesthetics and sales instead of integrity and effects. Designers re-create made forms instead of asking why and how things are first made. Fry encourages designers to work against darkness, meaning working against the negatives we have created.

The sacred is what we consider meaningful, what is respected more than design or production. The sacred declined with mass production. Our respect for human life and ecology should be globally sacred and protected. UNESCO is one agency that works toward global protection of the sacred.

In his article, "A Cosmopolitan Localism," Ezio Manzini explains localism as a natural occurrence whenever a particular place has assets. If those assets are leveraged for global consumption or tourism it is considered glocalization.

Champagne is a glocalism since the grapes thrive in the region of France but have a global consumption that requires Moet & Chandon to use glocal business strategies.

The sustainability factor of localization is “the ability to combine the enhancement of a resource to the need of safeguarding it from overexploitation.” Two important examples of problems are diamonds and acai. Both products are connected to regions of proverty and the resources have been used to an extreme, creating strain on the communities in the case of diamonds causing wars and a black market and with acai creating food shortages.

At top DeBeers changed its ad campaigns from encouraging diamond consumption to giving back a portion of diamond sales to people injured by the diamond market.

Acai was relatively unknown until it was featured on Oprah and de-plenished the rain forest supplies and oppressed workers.

Manzini concludes by exlplaining that Designers should be working for good, not for clients. Designers who create manufacturing strategies for local assets should be sure the strategies can be done and will not harm people. Designers no longer work with communication, fashion, objects or environment but the best possible integration of design and place.

Holistic design is respectfully approaching design as an organic process so that no matter what you design you consider the world.

Sustainable Communication Design

One way for communication design to be more responsible to the world is through content that informs users. Since 1992, United Colors of Benetton has been using their ad space to highlight key issues around the globe.

1992, in their first campaign reporters contribute images of catastrophes

2008, Sengalese businessmen who were given micro-credit loans

The 2007 Red Campaign is one example of a somewhat failed communication design strategy. The intention was to involve a number of products in red versions that gave proceeds to Africa. Gap, Motorola and Apple invested $100 million in advertising and raised only $18 million for The Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Sustainable Fashion Design

International Herald Tribune writer Suzy Menkes says sustainability is back in fashion. Stella McCartney has been working sustainably for a long time and not only in her avoidance of leather and fur but use of wind power. Read the Menkes/McCartney interview here.

Stella McCartney campaign F 2009

Another important figure in sustainable fashion design is Rogan Gregory. Bono and his wife Ali approached Gregory to create an eco clothing line called Edun, produced in Africa using African materials and workforce. They then added Tunisia, Peru and India. Gregory started his own company “Rogan” which was the 2007 winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion fund. The line uses natural sources such as coffee and plats as dyes and minimizes packaging. He also re-purposes spaces for his stores, keeping the original elements rather than re-building.

Sustainable Object Design

Perhaps the greatest category of sustainable design is objects because they can be quickly produced to follow the trend and turn a profit.

Above left a chair from carboard boxes by Fumi Masuda and Eco Fan, a bamboo computer cooler. See free eco options for cooling your computer.

Solio: Bringing solar power to the people!

Solio has created global chargers for computers and cell phones. Only one hour of sunshine gives 20 hours of Ipod use! For every charger that is purchased a Solio is provided to a family in global poverty who may be living with little or no electricity.

Sustainable environment design

The city of Paris is aiming to be the greenest in Europe by 2030. Various proposals have been submitted. Below Jean Nouvel would like to transform the non-descript towers and underutilized public spaces of the modernists’ failed housing developments. The monotony of these structures is transformed into hybrid building types. By selectively demolishing parts of buildings, altering unit layouts, re-defining entries, and adding building skins, the possibilities of a new identity for its residents emerge. He also proposes re-thinking the role of the surrounding landscape. Clearly defined green zones are brought into the city, to the front door of residences and neighborhoods.

One highly awarded sustainable structure is Renzo Piano's Academy of Arts & Sciences from 2008. Paino used an existing museum structure that was damaged in an earth quake to expand into a new museum, including a planetarium, aquarium, to which he added a natural roof environment.

Located near the Neckar River, Germany is the ‘Dupli Casa'. The private residence was designed by German architect Jurgen Mayer. Made from poured concrete the design sought to be low impact by re-using an existing location in the exact footprint of the previous house.

Environment Design

Normally when we talk about Environment Design we are talking about specific places. Architecture, urban planning and landscaping are considered. There are however many forms and scales of environments, such as those created by light and sound, as well as the modification of natural spaces.

Olafur Eliasson, Room for One Color, 1997

Artist Ryoji Ikeda combined light and sound for an installation at the tunnel of the former TWA airport in New York, Spectra, 2004

Using the ground to create an iconic environment

Working with nature, Earth Artists Walter Demaria Lighting Field 1977 and Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 use natrual elements to define environments

The mobile environment of an ice cream truck

and the simulated environment of Second Life

Brasilia is an example of total environment design

Oscar Niemeyer at Brasilia

•Brasilia is an entire city was built between 1956 to 1960 when it was designated capital of Brazil. The urban planner was Lucio Costa and the architect was Oscar Niemeyer.

•The city was designed in the shape of airplane

•The buildings were designed with a forward thinking futurist aesthetic

•Niemeyer is over 100 years old and is still designing buildings for the city

•Almost all of Niemeyer’s work is poured, reinforced concrete, a smooth colorless aesthetic that he learned from Le Corbusier

Even outside of Brasilia, Niemeyer's style is consistent.

The Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Rio, 1996

Defensive Space

Design elements that protect private property

Territoriality is using gates and hedges to establish borders.

Surveillance is monitoring entrances and sites of regular activity

Symbolic barriers are decorative and suggestive of borders but do not protect.

Immersion

A human state of being pleasantly occupied but not stressed.

-challenges where you are

-limited distraction

-location specific goals

-feedback

-removed from the worries of life

-controlling actions

-basic needs are met

-removed from connections to time

The multi-guest luxury Why Yacht, designed by Wally Hermes, is one alternitive to mass cruises.

Vacation locations work on the principle of immersion as well as theme parks that hold guests captive for short periods.

John Heskett explains in his essay "Environments"

•Environments are connected to communications and objects because environments provide a context

•Environments balance the same formal properties – form, size, color, pattern and texture

•Like objects, environments are connected to use and must consider safety

•Environment design can be divided into 2 groups,

exterior and interior. Exterior concerns architects and engineers while interior focuses more on style and decoration.

Frank Llyod Wright's Falling Water

•Exterior environments normally involve teams but everyday people have increased their role in environment design witnessed by the increased of home improvement television

•The US has a very high percentage of home designers, 1 for every 9,000 people

•The US has more land and thus ever expanding home size which makes US appliance designers less considerate of size. Japanese appliances are typically smaller and they think vertically instead of horizontally.

•Frederick Taylor was an American Engineer in the late 1800’s who influenced US office space to size/rank. The idea of partition space, or cubicles, did not become popular until the 1960’s.

•Tokyo City Hall was designed in 1991 with smart technology that used cards for various access

•7 World Trade Center was completed in 2006 as a smart-eco building that uses power based on tenants’ presence

•“Hotelling” is a design strategy for work spaces in which employees work from home and come in occasionally to shared space

•In the early 1990’s the ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day tried hotelling but then in 1999 created a new office space, designed by Clive Wilkinson in LA in 120,000 square feet, an adaptable space with combined private and communal space

Mass produced environments in the United States created particular architectural forms in suburban towns that were fixed in their aesthetic. In the case of Pizza Hut, many buildings were created as restaurants but the business turned to take out and delivery. When they tried to sell the buildings they had a hard time because of the fixed aesthetic. In the case below it was bought by the government and used as a police station.

American Apparel is an example of a global brand that adapts urban environments rather than creating new structures.

8 inc. are the environment designers for Apple.

Learning from Las Vegas, Venturi & Scott Brown

Las Vegas was established in 1911 and mostly built in the 1940’s. There was additional building in the 1960’s and then when the Mirage was built in 1989, a new generation of hotels began. Venturi’s book looks at the Vegas of the 1970’s.

•Venturi and Brown look at the commercial space of the strip as both space and symbol

•The actual building signs are more important than the architecture, a practice from the towns of the old west

•They are Marxist because they see the strip as a persuasion

•There is a larger order to the strip (civic order) and also an order within the casinos

•There project is a good example of primary research and extensive charts

The study revealed that environments designed for cars had large fronts and simple square backs that resemble the old towns of the west.

The interior of casinos are designed to keep people immersed.

Superstudio

•Superstudio began in 1966 in Italy after a major flood in Florence.

•The designers rejected the past of Italian architecture

•Toraldo di Francia is writing as a founder of Superstudio

•The author suggests that architects normally come along too late in the process, after social order has already been established

•Radical architecture still operates within the framework of towns, or the idea of working class versus estate. The architect supports class structure

•Modernism asked the question of the “degree zero”

•They emphasized renderings over production

•While they were interested in the future, they were not interested in technology without people

•They were also interested in the grid form as mans imposition on nature

•They proposed a “continuous monument,” which was a proposed network of expanse that contrasted tall cities

•For Superstudio architecture was a situation and it was discursive, a process that was very long

•Many of their projects were temporary and ecologically considerate

In his essay "Urban Outfitting," David Gilbert addresses the global issue of retail design, specifically flagship stores in world cities of fashion.

Barneys New York

Burberry London

Rethinking Environments

Some historic environments remain culturally relevant such as Pierre Koenig's Stahl House of 1960 shot by Steven Meisel for Valentino in 2002.

The sunken living rom first popularized in a case study house in 1957 was re-used in 2009 at the Venice Biennale.

Elmgreen & Dragset, Venice Biennial, 2009

There is also the potentional for furniture to transform an environment. Czech designer Maxim Velcovsky used the Vernor Panton chair to transofrm St. Bartholomew’s in Eastern Bohemia, Russia.