Walker S. Sustainable by Design: Explorations in Theory and Practice
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I am grateful to Tamsine Green at Earthscan who has advised and
encouraged me as this book was prepared for publication. I am also
thankful to my colleagues at the University of Calgary and around the
world who have provided feedback and commentary on earlier versions
of many of these chapters, which appeared as papers at conferences
or in journals; especially Jack Ingram at the University of Central
England, Jacques Giard at Arizona State University, Richard Buchanan
at Carnegie-Mellon University, and those anonymous readers who
peer-reviewed these pages in their various stages of development. I am
especially thankful to my wife, Helen, who so diligently and expertly
proofed and edited the manuscript, and who, along with my sons
Joseph and Benjamin, has had to put up with me during the months
that this book took shape.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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ACRONYMS
AND
ABBREVIATIONS
ABS acrylonitrile butadiene styrene
CAD computer-aided design
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
PDA personal digital assistant
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
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1
INTRODUCTION
The central theme of this book is design, and more especially, the
design of sustainable, functional objects. I explore this from a variety
of angles to throw light on its different facets. It is my intention that
the discussion will allow the reader to contemplate sustainable design
from hitherto little-considered perspectives and in doing so appreciate
its significant implications as well as its potential contribution to the
creation of a more meaningful material culture.
To advance the subject of design one has to engage in the activity of
designing. This is a critical creative stage in which the designer seeks
to apply general, abstract ideas in the process of developing specific,
defined artefacts. This transformative step distinguishes design from
many other types of inquiry
. Theoretical ideas inform the design of
an artefact and, in turn, contemplation of the artefact can advance
the development of ideas. It is an integrated and iterative process of
development. Hence, the activity of designing is an essential ingredient
in many of the discussions that follow, and I include numerous examples
of propositional design work in which I have attempted to articulate and
develop the ideas through the language of design itself.
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Sustainable by Design
22
These various thoughts, arguments and artefacts sometimes overlap
and, in the process, they are reinforced. Occasionally they may
even conflict, but these points of difference, too, can be useful and
instructive. I hope the discussions and examples will provide the reader
with an informative and stimulating set of ideas from which to consider
sustainable design, even if this is by disagreeing with some of the views
presented here; dissonance is often an effective catalyst for action
and change.
I have structured the book so that the discussion progresses from
broad, general issues to increasingly detailed design considerations. In
Chapter 2, I look at the current state of design and argue for a radical
rethinking of material culture and our understandings of good design.
In Chapter 3, I trace the history of sustainable development and make
the case for seeing it as a contemporary myth that helps us come to
terms with, among other things, our current environmental crisis. In
Chapter 4, I use the analogy of a journey to explore the design process
and to present an approach that may be more fitting for a sustainable
future. In subsequent chapters, I consider historically enduring artefacts
as a way of learning about object significance; meaningful objects
and what we mean by meaningful; and the relationship between
the spiritual and the material. I also use propositional designs as a
way of illustrating the application of sustainable thinking
, and reflect
on this design activity to develop ideas about tacit knowledge and
its fundamental role in the creative process. I propose an aesthetic
typology for contemporary products as a way of informing our ideas of
product design, and examine our conceptions of time and its relevance
to sustainable design. In the final chapters, I consider the notion that
many contemporary products represent a stagnation in creativity – an
endgame – and offer an alternative approach, grounded in ideas of
environmental and social responsibility, which can serve to stimulate
creative design development. I also discuss the transient nature of
objects and suggest that one way forward may be to more consciously
acknowledge this ephemerality, and design accordingly. In the closing
discussion I offer an in-depth consideration of one particular object as a
way of understanding its intellectual and aesthetic meanings in relation
to sustainable practices. In these various explorations, I have tried to
emphasize the creative and positive contribution of design, rather than
focusing on the oft-cited environmental ills of contemporary production
and consumption. Of course, in any discussion of sustainable
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3
Introduction
design, we have to acknowledge the damaging consequences of our
current activities, but the designer must go beyond this, not simply by
designing environmentally friendly products, but by challenging our
understandings of ‘functional objects’, by reframing our conceptions
of products, and by reassessing our notions of product aesthetics. In
recognizing the unsustainable nature of many current practices, we
have the opportunity to build a more constructive and more profound
approach that is, inherently, more sustainable.
Earlier versions of many of these discussions have been presented at
academic conferences or published in scholarly journals; all have been
edited and reworked for this book. In bringing them together for the
first time, I believe they form a body of work that offers, in a way not
possible within the confines of individual essays, a progression of ideas
and an original conception and exploration of sustainable
product design.
Sustainable design is a vast subject that we have barely begun to
tackle and so it would be unwise to attempt a definitive solution to
what is, in reality
, an embryonic, dynamic and volatile area of human
endeavour. By way of analogy, if we were to ask someone to describe
their experience of long-distance flying we might receive one of several
answers, such as: ‘It’s all rather boring – you sit down, eat, watch a film
and fall asleep,’ or ‘Take-off and landing are the most stressful because
there are dozens of instrument checks and constant instructions from
the tower,’ or ‘It’s exhausting, I’m on my feet for at least half the flight
serving drinks, food and duty-free goods,’ or again ‘It’s fun – you’re
given colouring books and toys and the stewards are nice.’ Answers to
the same question can be diverse and contradictory, but despite these
differences and inconsistencies, they are all reasonable – they simply
depend on the point of view of the respondent. We can also see that the
contradictions are not just differences of opinion; each reply accurately
reflects real differences in experience. Similarly, our understanding of
sustainable design will vary depending on our perspective – because
new aspects of this complex subject are revealed each time we change
our angle of view. It is for this reason that I have included a variety of
entry points into the subject, starting with a broad view of the current
discipline of product design and ending with a detailed analysis of one
design example.
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Sustainable by Design
44
There are many ways that sustainable design can be considered, and
the issues included here are varied and wide-ranging, but I do not claim
that this book is in any way comprehensive. The reader will not find
within its pages detailed accounts of product life cycle assessment,
1
the
Natural Step,
2
Factor 10
3
or other programmes that offer manufacturing
or systems analyses and processes for moving towards sustainability;
these subjects are covered more expertly than I could hope to do by
other authors. My focus is creative design and it is from this standpoint
that I begin my discussion.
I should also include a word on methodology. I am reluctant to call
this work ‘research’ because the term conjures notions of scientific
experiment or systematic, objective investigation and analysis. To adopt
such an approach in design would be a mistake. Creative design studies
do not always follow linear pathways, often they do not even follow
logical pathways, and they are neither abstract nor objective. Therefore,
they do not fall easily or solely within conventional understandings of
systematic, scholarly research. The results of design are not verifiable by
independent investigators adopting the same criteria and following the
same methodology
. Indeed, for a given problem, if different designers
were all to arrive at the same result we would be sorely disappointed. In
design we seek and expect variety not consistency.
The path I have adopted here is probably closer to a phenomenological
understanding than to scientific or scholastic research, by which I mean
that the ideas and propositional designs are not only based on rational
argument and the logical development of an area of interest. They
are also the result of informed, personal consideration, introspection
and reflection; lived experiences; direct awareness through the design
process; and intuitive decision making
.
I am very aware that my approach to sustainable design has been
informed by my own personal history
. I was brought up in one of the
most savagely industrialized valleys of South Wales where the hills were
treeless, smothered with slag heaps and pierced by mine workings,
and where the river ran orange from industrial effluent. The air was
thick with the filth, smell and noise of the Bessemer converter and blast
furnace, and social inequities, poverty, deprivation and ignorance
were starkly apparent. A career as an engineer, working in the oil
industry in The Netherlands, the Middle East and the UK, revealed to
me overwhelming evidence of further environmental destruction on a
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5
Introduction
massive scale, unconscionably short-sighted rates of non-renewable
resource depletion, and, in some areas, an arrogant trampling of
ancient, inherently meaningful and, by any measure, sustainable ways
of life. A personal interest in creative studies led me to a career shift,
an education in art and design, and eventually to industrial design
and exposure to further industrial processes with their own problems
associated with resource depletion and waste production, and their own
social ramifications.
All these experiences, which are strongly related to a number of
interconnected industrial processes, together with some 15 years of
postgraduate teaching
, have informed the ideas and arguments I
present here; in this, I owe a great debt to my students and colleagues,
from whom I continue to learn.
The result is an approach to design studies that is, largely, normative,
contingent and, because of the particular focus on sustainable design,
implicitly polemical. In this way
, I have endeavoured to acknowledge
both the objective and subjective aspects of our nature, because design
is a topic that lies at the junction of these two ways of thinking about,
and interacting with, the world. It sits at the meeting place of science
and art – but it is neither science nor art, it is simply and fascinatingly
design.
In the following discussions, I frequently use the terms sustainable
development and sustainability; most people tend to use these terms
interchangeably
. However, some authors have made a distinction
between the two, arguing that sustainable development suggests
an emphasis on development and economic growth, whereas
sustainability gives priority to the environment.
4
While there may be
merit in this view, I see both terms as being useful to describe our
current attempts to come to terms with the economic, environmental
and social concerns that we are facing in contemporary society. In
the fields of product design and production, these three priorities are
inextricably interwoven and inseparable and it does not seem to me
very helpful to draw potentially divisive distinctions. I therefore tend to
use the term sustainable development to describe a broad process of
development where economic, environmental and social concerns are
considered simultaneously, and I use the term sustainability to refer to
ways of living in which these concerns are responsibly embraced and
permeate our various endeavours. This way of using these terms is,
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Sustainable by Design
66
I think, reasonable, even if it is not as nuanced as some would like.
As will become evident, finer distinctions may be somewhat moot
because actually achieving a form of development that is sustainable
or achieving sustainability may well be impossible. Nevertheless,
both terms serve to focus our activities on doing things differently and
working in ways that are socially, environmentally and economically
responsible, and so both terms can be equally useful. The notion of the
sustainable in design is not about fine distinctions in terminology, it is
not about developing single-issue arguments, and it is not simply about
reasoned argument. Rather, it is about fully engaging in the world in
a way that is empathetic, intuitive and aesthetic. If we are to immerse
ourselves in the creative design process and become aware, through
this immersion, of the beauty and fragility of the world, then the fruits
of our endeavours will reflect this. It is not so much a matter of rational
proof but a matter of faith and hope; faith that goodness can prevail
and hope for a better future for all.
The following chapters trace one particular path through the often-
confusing territory of sustainable product design. En route, there are a
series of encounters with design and at each of these I play with a set
of ideas – by pursuing arguments and, in some cases, by engaging in
the design process. Each encounter is like a game in which the play
continues until a point is reached where it seems appropriate to stop;
and I have endeavoured to ground all these encounters on a firm
foundation congruent with sustainable goals. T
ogether, these suggest a
direction that leads away from inconsequential novelty, the utilitarian,
and the design of enduring objects that are readily discarded, and
towards an emphasis on the symbolic, the development of a meaningful
material culture, and the design of ephemeral objects of lasting value.
It is my hope that this direction will bring us a little closer to a more
sustainable vision for design.
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2
RETHINKING
MATERIAL
CULTURE
the cage of
aesthetic
convention
If we are to deal effectively with the many contemporary issues of
environmental degradation and social disparity, we are going to have
to rethink our notions of material culture, especially in the economically
developed countries. Potentially, designers can make significant
contributions to this endeavour by developing solutions that challenge
precedents and demonstrate alternative possibilities – but to do this
we will need to transform design education and design practice and
develop new understandings of product aesthetics and our notions of
‘good’ design.
Whether we like to admit it or not, within the discipline of industrial or
product design, there is a major emphasis on product appearance,
in both professional practice and design education, and it is this
preoccupation that, in many ways, renders product aesthetics hollow
and superficial. The dominance of fashion-
oriented, essentially trivial
aesthetic definitions suggests a barrenness of thinking, a relinquishment
of creativity, and a replacement of originality with bland, market-led,
‘safe’ solutions. This prevents industrial design from evolving into an
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