On 16 Apr 2009, at 3:06 pm, Terence Love wrote:

> To some extent your query depends on what you mean by 'design'.
> Which of the
> 800 or so fields of design are you thinking of?

>  If you also do searches on 'sustainability history' you will get a
> set of resources that take you back to the 50s.

As Terry rightly points out, it's not hard to find resources about the
history of sustainability in its broadest sense. It also matters how
'design' is defined. Just limiting a search to architecture alone will
produce a great deal of information.

I am not going to attempt to list a lot of resources, as without some
parameters I'm not sure where I would start or finish. I will make a
some observations, though these are more from art/design than any of
the other 700+ fields that Terry mentions, and with more of a UK focus.

I was wondering if there is now ANY design course that pays no
attention to sustainability? I would have thought that the great
majority have been quietly teaching these matters to a lesser or
greater extent for many years. The more obvious candidate courses are
perhaps 3D/industrial design and interior architecture, but many more
courses have been touched by these issues, including crafts, textiles,
graphics etc. in various ways. One of my Middlesex colleagues (Phil
Shaw, a graphic designer) did his PhD in what one might now regard as
sustainable printing inks. Much has been published about the
sustainable use of natural materials in textiles, and we have seen
information on the use of bamboo for a variety of purposes on this
list from time to time. I met someone recently from University of
Northampton who is conducting research into sustainable practices in
leather tanning - this apparently is trying to rediscover pre-
industrial techniques and utilise them in modern ways (though
admittedly there was a lot of urine used in the old days, not so
acceptable today).

Having given an introductory talk on two occasions recently at 'design
for low carbon' events, I too had traced the beginnings of the modern
sustainable design movement broadly to the Fuller/Papanek era, and had
contrasted their respective approaches to the situation I experienced
as a student and then a young designer. I first read Papanek --
especially Design for the Real World -- during a design masters at the
Royal College of Art in the early 1970s. We were still in the shadow
of the 1960s at that stage, an era with a tendency to want to make
more things disposable. O the joy of minimalist plastic cutlery that
broke before you could get the food to your mouth, and cardboard
furniture that slowly collapsed under the weight of only slightly
corpulent teenagers!

'Design for low carbon' is of course not necessarily the same as
sustainable design. Design for low carbon is both proactive and
specifically focused.

Leaving aside the silliness of some of those designs, there were many
debates about the sustainability of such processes, and many students
who had a clear sense of just how unsustainable these practices were.
Incidentally, while the Papanek message appealed to rationality -- and
certainly affected my own underlying thinking -- from a commercial
designer viewpoint there was little traction to his argument. As soon
as one looked at many of the design 'solutions' that were proposed,
one's heart sank at the commercial naivety of it all. On the other
hand, Bucky Fuller was clearly an outstanding designer as well as a
visionary (well, I exclude the Dymaxion car). He gave a rare London
lecture which I had the great pleasure of attending -- it was one of
the few occasions when I have known I was in the presence of a very
great man.

In furniture design there has long been concern about sustainability,
both through the imperatives of commercial efficiency gains, and
arising from the consciences of designer-makers. Perhaps the best
known work in the crafts was the John Makepeace initiative at Hooke
Park in the early 1980s, which sought to research forest thinnings and
train cohorts of knowledgeable craftsmen. It also produced some
innovative wooden buildings by top architects and engineers at that
time.

In fashion, perhaps an area of conspicuous consumption, there is the
ethical consumption project at London College of Fashion.

Some of the more interesting work from the art/design community comes
about at the boundary of urban regeneration schemes and fine art, for
example in coastal erosion areas, watersides, or reclamation of
previously industrial sites. One of my colleagues, Simon read, has
recently led a low impact saltmarsh protection scheme in Suffolk, and
I have seen many excellent examples of this kind of work throughout
the UK.

I am surprised that Martin Charter has not been mentioned. He has for
many years run a sustainable design centre (now at University of the
Creative Arts) and many international conferences.

I'm dredging my memory here, and I'm sure there are many other
initiatives that I have not mentioned or about which I know nothing.

I was a little confused about this debate when it started, until I
realised that I was receiving messages from two discussion lists where
exactly the same question had been asked, and two different groups has
answered. This leads me to point out a couple of resources. One is Ann
Thorpe and her excellent Designer's Atlas of Sustainability (http://www.designers-atlas.net
) and the Sustainable Design Teaching discussion list that she runs http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/SUSDESIGNTEACH
  where further resources may be found in recent discussions. The
other group that interests me is at Loughborough University in design/
technology, who are producing materials, for example http://www.informationinspiration.org.uk/
  and http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/susdesign/LTSN/introduction/Introduction.htm

Designers sometimes get a bad press on this list, and it often seems
that they have never thought about issues of sustainability until
quite recently. This is wrong. A few voices claiming vision for
sustainable design does not negate the considerable contributions made
by many for years past, some of whom are mentioned  above.

In working with art and design communities over the years, I have long
been struck by a strong sense of human ecology -- in the sense of our
relation to the environment -- which is often part of the mindset of
student designers and artists, and doesn't take much teaching effort
to bring out. Apart from the vocal few, perhaps what has happened most
in recent years is more explicit embedding of sustainability
principles in core curricula, better resources for tutors, and the
urgency for change being made more public by folks like Al Gore and
David King.

I was also wondering how list members are coping with reducing
personal carbon? Has anyone got below 5 tonnes. 10 tonnes? More?

David
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in The Fens.

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David Durling FDRS PhD   http://durling.tel
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