Adding sustainability as a design criteria when driving towards a solution makes the problem more complex and the solution slightly less bad. Unfortunately the solution does not often lead to sustainable design but simply a sustainable sugar-coating on a regular design that is to primarily take advantage of, and ultimately proliferate consumerism – only this time with less guilt. Consumerism is a key contributor to the environmental problems that human kind is creating by mass consumption of products, which can be equated to mass consumption of resources and production of waste. Johnathan Chapman suggests in Emotionally Durable Design that consumerist behaviour is an attempt to fulfil a far more fundamental and complex need for emotional experience. Few products designed purely for consumption are able to reach this experiential level and therefore simply continue the consumerist behavioural cycle as the need remains unsatisfied. (Jonathan Chapman, 2005)
For design to truly be able to claim a sustainable directive, sustainability needs to be not only a criteria but part of the objective. Victor Papanek suggests in Design for the Real World the best and simplest way to cease destroying the environment is for designers to stop designing, he then asserts “it seems to me we can go beyond not working at all, and work positively. Design can and must become a way in which young people can participate in changing society” this was a radical concept in 1980’s, but fast becoming a reality (Victor Papanek, 1984).
I conducted my first two years of educational design work with an eager attempt to make things green, some products turned out greener than others but very little had sustainability as an objective, rather as a footnote. To exemplify this, a team project from the second year of studies has been chosen in which the author was a co-creator. The product was an activity table for children. The table was a fun, colourful and engaging form with multiple interactive parts for toddlers to play at. The construction was based on rotationally moulded plastic parts of various colours.
The table design was a response to the local DIY culture with an aim to encourage the enthusiasm for DIY activity through childhood hands on learning. The ways in which children interact with the table and the ways in which the table assembled were designed to bring on board traditional construction techniques such as hammering in plastic pins and dovetail nesting stools. From an environmental stance the designers were happy with the solution because all parts were made from poly-ethylene, which is recyclable and food safe.
Image: DIY children’s activity table by D Stenhouse and M Buntzen
With a keener look into sustainable practice it is clear that this design may have been noble but it was far from sustainable. Firstly the bulky nature of the product would make shipping abroad costly both economically and environmentally, then, it is fair to assume that the table would experience a very short use phase (the few years before the toddler grows up) and subsequently thrown away. With no actual system in place for recycling such items the product would no doubt end up in the land fill where the plastic remains for years to come and the toxic inks leach. In addition to the lack of insight into the potential life-cycle of the product there are also much greater social implications to consider. This version of an indoor gym encourages child and caregivers to not only stay at home but stay inside effectively shutting them out from the local community. En masse this type of behaviour will create weakness of community unity and diminish community pride, which are both more fundamental than any need related to DIY enthusiasm. Maslow suggested in his hierarchy of needs that these social needs are the next most important to security and protection.
Image: Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. (as cited in University of Maryland, 2006)
If this project was revisited with a sustainable design objective a big shift in thinking would occur right at the beginning of the process. When first exploring ideas the question could have been raised whether it should be a product at all. There are likely a large variety of non-product solutions to the initial intention of creating enthusiasm for a DIY culture, for example some kind of community activity program. Within this idea the social benefits may also be achieved as the program helps to strengthen the community by acting as a local support group.
If we considered that there should be a physical product involved (after all, we are talking about the study of product design) there are a number of options which would take the project in a far more sustainable direction. A system would first be devised with the objective to deliver the experience desired. The product would then be a mere part of the system. With sustainability as an objective this would also inevitably lead to a solution which involved the whole community of children rather than an individual consumer. The product could be a durable and adaptive artefact which is to be used by many children over a long period of time such as a public playground device. Access to this kind of product would create similar community benefits as the first proposal but in a less structured way.
We can see from the above scenarios that the ability for the product’s materials to be recycled or even biodegraded is not the end of the story as was suggested in the original design of the children’s activity table. Of course this is an important factor and should be included in the system being designed. It is only a systems approach that will enable the full life cycle of the materials to be considered. This includes the collection, manufacturing and distribution of materials and products, and of course the recovery and ideally reuse.
With a well-designed system we will often find that the benefits gained from smart environmental management of products and materials is often complementary to the social benefits sought, for example if the product is made from local resources by local industry the community will benefit both economically and socially, that is by creating unity and pride through self-sufficiency.
It must be noted that it is not just the designer’s responsibility to make human activity more sustainable, it is a shared responsibility with the people using the products (or service systems). The designer’s role is to encourage a brand of thinking where people invest in the experiences they are actually craving rather than quenching this thirst with consumerist behaviour. For this paradigm it is essential that communities and cultures are strong and the pride of place prevails.
If products are to be created which help, rather than hinder, sustainable progress the individual designer must review his or her motives for designing a product. If the designer is simply designing for pure profit it is likely that they are not only going to produce products designed for mass consumption such as the aforementioned children’s activity table but they themselves are part of the consumerist culture they are proliferating. Buckminster Fuller is quoted as saying “you have to make up your mind either to make money or to make sense, if you want to be a designer” (as cited in Victor Papanek, 1984) Designers should add sustainability as a default objective to all their briefs. This will inevitably lead to the creation of elegant systems where the beneficiaries include the communities and the environment. They are no longer simply designing products for mass manufacture, but are engaging in socially responsible and genuinely sustainable practice.
Bibliography:
Jonathan Chapman. (2005). Emotionally durable design. London: Earthscan.
University of Maryland. (2006). Basic Needs. Retrieved 5th June, 2009, from http://www.union.umd.edu/GH/basic_needs/index.html
Victor Papanek. (1984). [Preface]. Design for the real world (2 ed.). London: Thames and Hudson.
damon stenhouse 