Citation: Lacey, E. (2009). Contemporary ceramic design for meaningful interaction and emotional durability: A case study. International Journal of Design, 3(2), 87-92.
67. The paper presents a case study of the design of emotionally durable ceramics, which is then applied in real commercial contexts. It illustrates how designers can be inspired by hand crafted unique objects, and how designers in turn can translate some of their qualities for use in mass-produced objects.
‘fewer better things’ (personal communication, February, 2007),
for example ceramic objects which transcend the fast moving home-ware trends and remain loved and relevant over extended time. As observed through personal experience, value beyond monetary cost can be assigned to individual handmade products. It is this uniqueness and integrity of material and process seen in handmade crafts that are hoped to be imbued into commercial products in order to make them emotionally durable.
How could one design ‘unique’ pieces that would be valued on a personal level and which could also be industrially mass produced? The notion of integrity is central in this contradiction.
89. The design explorations resulted in the main proposition that design (or craft) features that take the user on a journey contribute to meaningful experience. In the case of hand-made or hand-finished products, visual clues, such as an unglazed
area or an irregularity in form, can lead to tactile investigation of these unique or seemingly unique qualities. It is this level of consciousness required to explore the object in detail that is the aim of the author’s own designs, in hopes of enhancing the user’s initial experience of an object in a way that encourages one to
return to explore the details again and again.
The surprise element described in the experience of the TAC01 can be seen as a cue to explore the product.
In his book Emotionally Durable Design (2005), Jonathan Chapman proposes that we might address issues of sustainability through exploring product lifespan and relating this to peoples’ emotional needs. He describes a ‘utopian futurescape’ where design is derived from “profound and sophisticated user experiences that penetrate the psyche over time” (p. 83).
90. The reflective answers provided levels of personal attachment that the designer cannot (or perhaps should not) try to contrive. The user autonomy, which is asserted here, is evidently connected to the very individual, social, cultural and emotional
value of the object and perhaps suggests that the designer should look at ways in which to leave space in the design for the consumers’ own interpretation, rather than design a piece to be used only as directed by the designer. For example, enabling
the user to personalize an object or adapt the way it is used. This concept is illustrated in the following section.
Creating the perfect ceramic : The first was to add an element of surprise that
would nudge the user into exploring the object consciously. The second was to incorporate a unique element that would give the object an individual identity, again to nudge the user into closer inspection. The third was to allow for a level of interaction which could be personal and which was beyond simply drinking tea or
coffee.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Switch! Energy Ecologies in Everyday Life
Citation: Mazé, R., & Redström, J. (2008). Switch! Energy ecologies in everyday life. International Journal of Design, 2(3), 55-70.
55. There is no single answer to the question of how people should live, nor any silver bullet for solving current ecological problems—and yet, contemporary design must seek ways to think and act in light of emerging environmental challenges. We present here an overview of the Switch! design research program, a continuation of our previous work on how interaction and product design can promote awareness of energy use in everyday life. Extending this approach to a larger architectural and urban scale, Switch! was set up to explore the possibilities of design as an intervention into multiple and interpenetrating technical, material and social systems—or ecologies. In addition to designing materials, objects, and interfaces, Switch! also examines how design can be engaged in staging potential scenarios, narratives and debates.
The design of interventions into energy ecologies and the use of design methods become a platform for exposing existing habits and hidden norms as well as for proposing alternative actions and views. These propositions have been developed through practical experimentation and the materialization of design examples. Central to our investigation is how critical practice enables us to examine and discuss the concepts, strategies and ideologies underlying sustainable design.
With the new challenges presented by climate and energy issues, design must reexamine its role in shaping and changing values— both within the sustainability discourse and within the design practices that impact production and the products that shape
practices of consumption. If we consider that design has had, and continues to have, a profound power to influence consumer and societal values, then we might renew its role in light of current problematics of mass-production and (over)consumption. We
might rethink how the values embodied in products influence beliefs and behaviors, and how systems of objects, service ecologies and social ecologies influence user relationships with design products throughout their lifespans and lifecycles.
design can influence multiple actions and interactions that accumulate over time
56. Inspired by contemporary thinking in material culture and the sociology of technology, Switch! considers design as an intervention into multiple and interpenetrating technical, material, and social systems—or ecologies. Although the power to control or to design and implement new systems and structures at such
a scale may not fall to design research, we can use design as a vehicle for exposing, debating and intervening in values within these complex ecologies, thereby introducing new openings for awareness and change.
Design is often said to be about “value creation,” referring to the power of design to effect meaningful and valuable experiences for consumers as well as material and brand value for clients and stakeholders. Operating on behalf of producers, design is bound
up with larger projects of increasing economic and symbolic capital. With respect to consumption, design is no longer, if it has ever been, solely about satisfying the basic human needs of an individual or a society, but also about creating needs and even
manufacturing desire (Forty, 1986). Historically, this persuasive power of design has been employed in service to expanding consumption—indeed, design came into being at a particular stage in the history of capitalism, bound up with economies of industrial production and mass-consumption.
Given this history, as well as contemporary awareness of some of the undesirable ecological side-effects of previous modes of production and consumption, perhaps it is no wonder that design has often been seen as part of the problem within the discourse on environmentalism. In response, diverse strategies are collecting under the umbrella of sustainable design, ranging from those trying to minimize negative environmental costs to those trying to solve environmental problems. Much effort has been directed
towards improving existing manufacturing systems, increasing the energy efficiency of processes and products, and promoting green consumption. Others move away from the production of and desire for the “new,” towards the endurance, reuse and sustainment
of existing things, or towards continuing and closed systems of production.
Given the difficulty of foreseeing the future consequences of design decisions, it is possible that things we regard as solutions may produce further problems elsewhere
in the world or later on in time. Humanitarian and environmental interests intersect and even compete within sustainable design, pointing to larger historical and philosophical tensions between ideas of nature and culture, progress and change, individualism and collectivism.
57. Engaging with the issues bound up in environmental discourse and sustainable design means, to some extent, engaging with the complexity of causes and effects, problems and solutions. Designers must consider the potential consequences and impact
of their proposals in order to, at least to some extent, anticipate potential problematics and emerging issues. Propositions must also be located in a world already densely-populated with previous design “solutions” to human needs and desires.
66. We believe that design research offers the possibility to act as a sort of curation in the development of a mature debate about environmental issues by materializing diverse—and perhaps even conflicting—values in forms and formats that people can relate to and participate in.
68. Sustainable design must incorporate and encourage mechanisms for critically reflecting on the role and responsibility of design in shaping human experience and changing social conditions. Rather than attempting to preserve the status quo or
return to a previous state of affairs, this requires us to acknowledge the inevitably productive and persuasive power of design in creating the “new.” Besides new solutions—or problems—this might also include the formation of reflective practitioners and alternative products. As an “art of staging,” design might meet
sustainability in “problem-finding” within existing and emerging paradigms, opening up questions to an expanded range of interests and stakeholders. Critical practice might be brought to bear on sustainable design not as simplification but diversification of the ways in which we might understand the challenges at hand. In such terms, design practice might employ research and theory in order to open up the way for constructive engagement in complexity.
55. There is no single answer to the question of how people should live, nor any silver bullet for solving current ecological problems—and yet, contemporary design must seek ways to think and act in light of emerging environmental challenges. We present here an overview of the Switch! design research program, a continuation of our previous work on how interaction and product design can promote awareness of energy use in everyday life. Extending this approach to a larger architectural and urban scale, Switch! was set up to explore the possibilities of design as an intervention into multiple and interpenetrating technical, material and social systems—or ecologies. In addition to designing materials, objects, and interfaces, Switch! also examines how design can be engaged in staging potential scenarios, narratives and debates.
The design of interventions into energy ecologies and the use of design methods become a platform for exposing existing habits and hidden norms as well as for proposing alternative actions and views. These propositions have been developed through practical experimentation and the materialization of design examples. Central to our investigation is how critical practice enables us to examine and discuss the concepts, strategies and ideologies underlying sustainable design.
With the new challenges presented by climate and energy issues, design must reexamine its role in shaping and changing values— both within the sustainability discourse and within the design practices that impact production and the products that shape
practices of consumption. If we consider that design has had, and continues to have, a profound power to influence consumer and societal values, then we might renew its role in light of current problematics of mass-production and (over)consumption. We
might rethink how the values embodied in products influence beliefs and behaviors, and how systems of objects, service ecologies and social ecologies influence user relationships with design products throughout their lifespans and lifecycles.
design can influence multiple actions and interactions that accumulate over time
56. Inspired by contemporary thinking in material culture and the sociology of technology, Switch! considers design as an intervention into multiple and interpenetrating technical, material, and social systems—or ecologies. Although the power to control or to design and implement new systems and structures at such
a scale may not fall to design research, we can use design as a vehicle for exposing, debating and intervening in values within these complex ecologies, thereby introducing new openings for awareness and change.
Design is often said to be about “value creation,” referring to the power of design to effect meaningful and valuable experiences for consumers as well as material and brand value for clients and stakeholders. Operating on behalf of producers, design is bound
up with larger projects of increasing economic and symbolic capital. With respect to consumption, design is no longer, if it has ever been, solely about satisfying the basic human needs of an individual or a society, but also about creating needs and even
manufacturing desire (Forty, 1986). Historically, this persuasive power of design has been employed in service to expanding consumption—indeed, design came into being at a particular stage in the history of capitalism, bound up with economies of industrial production and mass-consumption.
Given this history, as well as contemporary awareness of some of the undesirable ecological side-effects of previous modes of production and consumption, perhaps it is no wonder that design has often been seen as part of the problem within the discourse on environmentalism. In response, diverse strategies are collecting under the umbrella of sustainable design, ranging from those trying to minimize negative environmental costs to those trying to solve environmental problems. Much effort has been directed
towards improving existing manufacturing systems, increasing the energy efficiency of processes and products, and promoting green consumption. Others move away from the production of and desire for the “new,” towards the endurance, reuse and sustainment
of existing things, or towards continuing and closed systems of production.
Given the difficulty of foreseeing the future consequences of design decisions, it is possible that things we regard as solutions may produce further problems elsewhere
in the world or later on in time. Humanitarian and environmental interests intersect and even compete within sustainable design, pointing to larger historical and philosophical tensions between ideas of nature and culture, progress and change, individualism and collectivism.
57. Engaging with the issues bound up in environmental discourse and sustainable design means, to some extent, engaging with the complexity of causes and effects, problems and solutions. Designers must consider the potential consequences and impact
of their proposals in order to, at least to some extent, anticipate potential problematics and emerging issues. Propositions must also be located in a world already densely-populated with previous design “solutions” to human needs and desires.
66. We believe that design research offers the possibility to act as a sort of curation in the development of a mature debate about environmental issues by materializing diverse—and perhaps even conflicting—values in forms and formats that people can relate to and participate in.
68. Sustainable design must incorporate and encourage mechanisms for critically reflecting on the role and responsibility of design in shaping human experience and changing social conditions. Rather than attempting to preserve the status quo or
return to a previous state of affairs, this requires us to acknowledge the inevitably productive and persuasive power of design in creating the “new.” Besides new solutions—or problems—this might also include the formation of reflective practitioners and alternative products. As an “art of staging,” design might meet
sustainability in “problem-finding” within existing and emerging paradigms, opening up questions to an expanded range of interests and stakeholders. Critical practice might be brought to bear on sustainable design not as simplification but diversification of the ways in which we might understand the challenges at hand. In such terms, design practice might employ research and theory in order to open up the way for constructive engagement in complexity.
Consumer-Product Attachment: Measurement and Design Implications
Citation: Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Zwartkruis-Pelgrim, E. P. H. (2008). Consumer-product attachment: Measurement and design implications. International Journal of Design, 2(3), 1-13.
1. Due to differences in the attachment consumers experience towards the durable products they own, they hang on to certain products whereas they easily dispose of others. From the viewpoint of sustainability, it may be worthwhile to lengthen the life span of many durable consumer products. Hence, there is a challenge for designers to strengthen the bond between consumers and their products through the product design process. In the present study, we develop a scale to measure consumer-product attachment, and we identify and measure seven possible determinants of attachment: enjoyment, memories to persons, places, and events, support of self-identity, life vision, utility, reliability, and market value. Only memories and enjoyment contribute positively to the degree of attachment. The highest levels of attachment are registered for recently acquired products (<1 year) and for products owned for more than 20 years. For new products, enjoyment may be the main driver of attachment, whereas for old products memories may be more important.
Based on these results, several design strategies are proposed to intensify the emotional bond that users experience with their durable products: design more enjoyable products, develop products that are used together with other people, and design products that gracefully accumulate the signs of their usage history in their appearance.
From the viewpoint of sustainability, high product turnover is in many cases undesirable, because it produces waste and uses up more scarce resources.
One possible strategy to slow down product life cycles is by increasing the attachment people experience towards the products they use and own.
When a person becomes attached to an object, he or she is more likely to handle the object with care, repair it when it breaks down, and postpone its replacement as long as possible.
CONSUMER - PRODUCT ATTACHMENT
We define the consumer-product attachment as the strength of the emotional bond a consumer experiences with a durable product. ...implies the existence of an emotional tie between a person and an object.
IRREPLACEABILITY, INDESPENSABILITY & SELF EXTENSION
2. irreplacebble =symbolic meaning not present in other products.
indispensable = practical not emotional reasoning
self extension= entends self concept, expected / owned
DETERMINANTS OF ATTACHMENT
People form feelings of attachment to objects irrespectie of the primary functions these products perform. WHY?
People use objects to define the self, to create a sense of identity, to remind themselves and others of who they are or who they would like to be and to protect and enhance their self-concept.
3.Diffuse Self - Enjoyment
Private Self - Individual Autonomy
Public Self - Group Affiliation
Collective Self - Life Vision
4. From the viewpoint of sustainability, it is interesting to determine changes in the degree of consumer-product attachment over time, because they will partly be responsible for the moment of product disposal.
8. Implications for designers seeking to increase the sustainability of people's consumption patterns by stimulating the degree of attachment between people and the products they own.
Designers should design products that are useful and evoke enjoyment, or facilitate the formation of associations between products and people, places or events (memories).
9. The recollection of memories may be enhanced if a product shows physical signs of the events. *material choice
1. Due to differences in the attachment consumers experience towards the durable products they own, they hang on to certain products whereas they easily dispose of others. From the viewpoint of sustainability, it may be worthwhile to lengthen the life span of many durable consumer products. Hence, there is a challenge for designers to strengthen the bond between consumers and their products through the product design process. In the present study, we develop a scale to measure consumer-product attachment, and we identify and measure seven possible determinants of attachment: enjoyment, memories to persons, places, and events, support of self-identity, life vision, utility, reliability, and market value. Only memories and enjoyment contribute positively to the degree of attachment. The highest levels of attachment are registered for recently acquired products (<1 year) and for products owned for more than 20 years. For new products, enjoyment may be the main driver of attachment, whereas for old products memories may be more important.
Based on these results, several design strategies are proposed to intensify the emotional bond that users experience with their durable products: design more enjoyable products, develop products that are used together with other people, and design products that gracefully accumulate the signs of their usage history in their appearance.
From the viewpoint of sustainability, high product turnover is in many cases undesirable, because it produces waste and uses up more scarce resources.
One possible strategy to slow down product life cycles is by increasing the attachment people experience towards the products they use and own.
When a person becomes attached to an object, he or she is more likely to handle the object with care, repair it when it breaks down, and postpone its replacement as long as possible.
CONSUMER - PRODUCT ATTACHMENT
We define the consumer-product attachment as the strength of the emotional bond a consumer experiences with a durable product. ...implies the existence of an emotional tie between a person and an object.
IRREPLACEABILITY, INDESPENSABILITY & SELF EXTENSION
2. irreplacebble =symbolic meaning not present in other products.
indispensable = practical not emotional reasoning
self extension= entends self concept, expected / owned
DETERMINANTS OF ATTACHMENT
People form feelings of attachment to objects irrespectie of the primary functions these products perform. WHY?
People use objects to define the self, to create a sense of identity, to remind themselves and others of who they are or who they would like to be and to protect and enhance their self-concept.
3.Diffuse Self - Enjoyment
Private Self - Individual Autonomy
Public Self - Group Affiliation
Collective Self - Life Vision
4. From the viewpoint of sustainability, it is interesting to determine changes in the degree of consumer-product attachment over time, because they will partly be responsible for the moment of product disposal.
8. Implications for designers seeking to increase the sustainability of people's consumption patterns by stimulating the degree of attachment between people and the products they own.
Designers should design products that are useful and evoke enjoyment, or facilitate the formation of associations between products and people, places or events (memories).
9. The recollection of memories may be enhanced if a product shows physical signs of the events. *material choice
The Product Ecology
Understanding Social Product Use & Supporting Design Culture
International Journal of Design, 2(1), 2008
J. Forlozzi
11. The Product Ecology is useful because it articulates all of the factors that evoke social behavior around products. The factors in the framework can be used in a generative manner to scaffold the selection of design research methods for
understanding current experience and generating new products to change that experience.
Frameworks and theories in design and interaction design are relatively new, there being few examples and some disagreement about what constitutes a theory, especially in design. They are not scientific theories in the narrow sense of predicting action
irrespective of context and situation. Rather, they are concerned with transforming the conditions and potentials for human action.
Frameworks and theories in design allow designers to assess a complex and unique problem by articulating the phenomena involved in a design problem and the relationship
between those phenomena. In addition, they allow for movement between prescribed design and research processes and the use of the designer’s implicit judgment, knowledge gleaned from other design examples, ethical responsibility, and pattern seeking in solving problems.
THE PRODUCT ECOLOGY FRAMEWORK
12. The functional, aesthetic, symbolic, emotional and social dimensions of a product, combined with other units of analysis, or factors, in the ecology, help to describe how people make social relationships with products. These include the product; the
surrounding products and other systems of products; the people who use it, and their attitudes, disposition, roles, and relationships; the physical structure, norms and routines of the place the product is used; and the social and cultural contexts of the people who use the product and possibly even the people who make the product.
International Journal of Design, 2(1), 2008
J. Forlozzi
11. The Product Ecology is useful because it articulates all of the factors that evoke social behavior around products. The factors in the framework can be used in a generative manner to scaffold the selection of design research methods for
understanding current experience and generating new products to change that experience.
Frameworks and theories in design and interaction design are relatively new, there being few examples and some disagreement about what constitutes a theory, especially in design. They are not scientific theories in the narrow sense of predicting action
irrespective of context and situation. Rather, they are concerned with transforming the conditions and potentials for human action.
Frameworks and theories in design allow designers to assess a complex and unique problem by articulating the phenomena involved in a design problem and the relationship
between those phenomena. In addition, they allow for movement between prescribed design and research processes and the use of the designer’s implicit judgment, knowledge gleaned from other design examples, ethical responsibility, and pattern seeking in solving problems.
THE PRODUCT ECOLOGY FRAMEWORK
12. The functional, aesthetic, symbolic, emotional and social dimensions of a product, combined with other units of analysis, or factors, in the ecology, help to describe how people make social relationships with products. These include the product; the
surrounding products and other systems of products; the people who use it, and their attitudes, disposition, roles, and relationships; the physical structure, norms and routines of the place the product is used; and the social and cultural contexts of the people who use the product and possibly even the people who make the product.
Is Going Green as Hard as It Seems?
Lehrer, J. PRINT, 10.09
PRINTMAG.COM
28. importance of designers embracing and understanding sustainability.
taking it seriously and not considering it a catchphrase or buzzword.
29. impact of a clients budget on works and clients wants, "conversation by conversation"
its a process.
PRINTMAG.COM
28. importance of designers embracing and understanding sustainability.
taking it seriously and not considering it a catchphrase or buzzword.
29. impact of a clients budget on works and clients wants, "conversation by conversation"
its a process.
David Trubridge at the American Craft Council Salon
17.05.07
Lily Kane, Director of Education at ACC
http://greenjeansbrooklyn.blogspot.com/2007/05/david-trubridge-at-american-craft.html
para-3. The upshot of his presentation was that design must become more sustainable, and that craft as a process is modeling the way forward.
4. At a time when the need for sustainability is no longer in question, designers must start thinking less in terms of "products" and more in terms of "process," Trubridge said. Designers are, wittingly or not, in fact complicit with manufacturers, ever eager to come out with new items, in the overproduction that's straining resources and creating the waste problem, he added.
5.Yet while the world hardly needs more stuff, there is a human impulse to want things. This is where craft comes in, he argued: if more designers would focus on making things on a small scale using local materials, building things with care and love, then we would want to have them for a long time, and thereby we wouldn't be wasting materials and resources by buying temporary or disposable items. In other words, perhaps design can become more sustainable by becoming more like craft.
Lily Kane, Director of Education at ACC
http://greenjeansbrooklyn.blogspot.com/2007/05/david-trubridge-at-american-craft.html
para-3. The upshot of his presentation was that design must become more sustainable, and that craft as a process is modeling the way forward.
4. At a time when the need for sustainability is no longer in question, designers must start thinking less in terms of "products" and more in terms of "process," Trubridge said. Designers are, wittingly or not, in fact complicit with manufacturers, ever eager to come out with new items, in the overproduction that's straining resources and creating the waste problem, he added.
5.Yet while the world hardly needs more stuff, there is a human impulse to want things. This is where craft comes in, he argued: if more designers would focus on making things on a small scale using local materials, building things with care and love, then we would want to have them for a long time, and thereby we wouldn't be wasting materials and resources by buying temporary or disposable items. In other words, perhaps design can become more sustainable by becoming more like craft.
Designer Guilt: Why Sustainable Design Matters
Borschke, M.
para-1. Kevin McCullagh: 'This rising tide of disaffection towards design tends to share twi themes: a distaste for the superficiality of design's media-celebrity nexus; and a growing discomfort with design's role in generating 'useless stuff,'... ' just as critics from outside design are sharpening their knives, designers are becoming racked with self doubt and loathing.'
2. Design problems are merely opportunities for design solutions. In a world where concerns about the environment have become mainstream, the creation of 'useless stuff' may now just be cause for hand-wringing, it might also signal bad design.
3. 'Some people argue that there is no such thing as sustainable design. These principles should form part of any good design.' Angelique Hutchison, ‘Design for sustainability focuses on reducing the environmental impact of a product during its manufacture, use and disposal or reuse. It uses strategies such as avoiding use of toxic substances during production, minimising materials used, minimising energy or water required during use, and designing for repair, reuse or disassembly and recycling.’
4. ‘I think that design's ability to address sustainability is limited by its focus on the object or product,’ Hutchison continues. ‘Designers need to consider the larger systems within which they (and their objects) are operating. They need to reconsider the 'needs' that they are trying to address through the design of a new object, and question if those needs can be met in another more sustainable way, through a different type of product or system or mode of use. For example, car share systems reconfigure the perception that the consumer needs a car, when what they really need is transport. Designers also need to work in a more interdisciplinary way, not only with other designers but across technical and social disciplines, to understand the complexities of social, economic, technical and ecological systems that influence their design.’
8.growing demand from the population at large means that designers are also turning to sustainable practice because it’s good business. Trend forecasters such as The Future Laboratory in London, are tossing around phrases like ‘conscience consumers’ and hyping ‘nu austerity’ as this year’s answer to last year’s ‘bling’, all the while assuring marketers and brand strategists that the market is out there, that the green consumer cuts across political lines and that the highly desirable, upper middle class market is ready to spend. Green design, that is, may be green in more ways than one.
11. If sustainable design is good design, then good design is good business.
12.‘Sustainable design is about creating environments that allow people to live, work, play in such a way that the opportunities to do similar will not be compromised in the future.’ For designers and architects, sustainable design may not only be ethical, it may be the opportunity of a lifetime.- Caroline Pidcock, president of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council
para-1. Kevin McCullagh: 'This rising tide of disaffection towards design tends to share twi themes: a distaste for the superficiality of design's media-celebrity nexus; and a growing discomfort with design's role in generating 'useless stuff,'... ' just as critics from outside design are sharpening their knives, designers are becoming racked with self doubt and loathing.'
2. Design problems are merely opportunities for design solutions. In a world where concerns about the environment have become mainstream, the creation of 'useless stuff' may now just be cause for hand-wringing, it might also signal bad design.
3. 'Some people argue that there is no such thing as sustainable design. These principles should form part of any good design.' Angelique Hutchison, ‘Design for sustainability focuses on reducing the environmental impact of a product during its manufacture, use and disposal or reuse. It uses strategies such as avoiding use of toxic substances during production, minimising materials used, minimising energy or water required during use, and designing for repair, reuse or disassembly and recycling.’
4. ‘I think that design's ability to address sustainability is limited by its focus on the object or product,’ Hutchison continues. ‘Designers need to consider the larger systems within which they (and their objects) are operating. They need to reconsider the 'needs' that they are trying to address through the design of a new object, and question if those needs can be met in another more sustainable way, through a different type of product or system or mode of use. For example, car share systems reconfigure the perception that the consumer needs a car, when what they really need is transport. Designers also need to work in a more interdisciplinary way, not only with other designers but across technical and social disciplines, to understand the complexities of social, economic, technical and ecological systems that influence their design.’
8.growing demand from the population at large means that designers are also turning to sustainable practice because it’s good business. Trend forecasters such as The Future Laboratory in London, are tossing around phrases like ‘conscience consumers’ and hyping ‘nu austerity’ as this year’s answer to last year’s ‘bling’, all the while assuring marketers and brand strategists that the market is out there, that the green consumer cuts across political lines and that the highly desirable, upper middle class market is ready to spend. Green design, that is, may be green in more ways than one.
11. If sustainable design is good design, then good design is good business.
12.‘Sustainable design is about creating environments that allow people to live, work, play in such a way that the opportunities to do similar will not be compromised in the future.’ For designers and architects, sustainable design may not only be ethical, it may be the opportunity of a lifetime.- Caroline Pidcock, president of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council
Friday, October 9, 2009
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