Today, I realized that sustainability design does exist! Well, not completely, because the idea of design being sustainable is still in development. This realization is thanks to Nathan Shedroff, a guest speaker, who addressed the issue of how designers need to find solutions that will help society be more sustainable through services and system thinking.
Shedroff started by explaining how business, sustainability and design are normally considered to be three different fields. But, according to him, in order for the community to achieve a higher level of sustainability these three fields need to work together. These three fields can be fused together through serviceable design (which creates the experiences the customer will acquire) and systems thinking (the process required to create a project).
But then, how does sustainability play a role in design? Well, first, three questions need to be answered: “What does a more sustainable world look like? What does a more meaningful world look like? and What does a post-consumer world look like?” (Shedroff, Nathan). Many places around the world are more sustainable than the USA; these places include Brazil, Cuba, and India. What all these three places have in common is that they are developing countries that have less access to mass production than the USA community has.
For example, in order for Curitiba, Brazil to organize a livable place for the large community they had to plan their budget carefully. They found a way to create a massive transportation system by recycling their busses, instead of creating an underground subway. They divided their streets into three parts, two for cars and the middle only for buses to come and go. (This is a really interesting sustainable site, it would take me the entire blog to explain how amazingly Curitiba works, so if you want to know more see this web page: Yes! Magazine)
So, going back to the questions, it is difficult to create a meaningful place that is equally important to everyone, since everyone has a different definition of what meaningful is. It is important to say, though, that Shedroff pointed out that now, this society has a higher tendency to give meaning to connections with objects. Finally, to answer the last question, “even with the recession, it hasn’t changed consumers' outlook” on acquiring items they might not need (Shedroff, Nathan). So what are we going to do? Well, that’s for us, the new and existing designers, to find out.
Additionally, according to Shedroff, designers need to considerate the sustainability principles of systems thinking that will help us achieve our goal of being more sustainable. On the other hand, although there are existing tools like National Capitalism, National Step, and Cradle to Cradle for us to be “sustainable,” they are not very helpful for designers because the procedures are incomplete. Finally,the broad list of tools that can guide us to a more sustainable design, unfortunately, are not fully developed and therefore not as useful as we would wish.
As mentioned, sustainability design is a developed concept that needs to go through a polishing process in order for us to understand it more.
However, there is a bright picture too! Some of the strategies that Shedroff mentioned were to create a design that is “useful, useable, meaningful and accessible” to the community (Shedroff, Nathan). Designers can be more sustainable by creating products that can dematerialize (like the aluminium Macbook) are durable, reusable, easily disassemble, or restored.
References
Nathan Shedroff presentation "Sustainable Innovation"
Yes Magazine = http://www.yesmagazine.org/
Photos:
http://ecolocalizer.com/files/2008/12/curutiba1.jpg
http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/minimahuella.jpg
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