Dear All,

Reflecting on Terry's comments, one must always wonder where to parse a phrase. I had read Gulden's query on the [history of sustainable design education] as a search for the specific literature on the history of sustainable design education rather than a search through all history for sustainability practices in design. 

Design education itself only dates back -- depending how you define it -- to some relatively recent date, probably in the 20th century. To be sure, many of the fields and disciplines we define as design fields date back much farther, as do institutions that teach the skills, professions, and disciplines of these fields. The vast majority of degree programs specifically designated as "design" programs began at some point between the middle of the 20th century and the 1980s. There are notable exceptions, but they are few. The relatively recent history of the field explains, in part, is why so many people that need to hire designers are still confused about what designers are, what they do, and what uses they serve.

When I got to Norway in the late 1980s, for example, there were only a couple of schools where one could study design under that term, primarily the "kunsthandverk" academy in Oslo and the parallel lines at the art academy in Bergen. None of the universities offered design courses, though some specific lower schools offered courses that would map onto design. At that time, many people in business and industry thought that design was essentially a fancy name for advertising and that one could hire any advertising agency to design something -- if one did not simply employ a cousin or spouse who had once studied art. The major challenge facing designers in Norway at that time was educating the businesses and industries that ought to use professional design services to improve products and services.

Many will recognize this scenario in different guises, and that is why so many design councils and design centers are still active in design promotion today.

Now that's the long way around in saying that if most professional design education is only a few decades old, sustainable design education cannot be older, despite the durable history of sustainable design practices. If we're talking about sustainability practices, they go back farther still. 

Back in the 1980s, for example, I had the thrill of reading Wendell Berry's Gift of the Good Earth. Part of Berry's book recounts how the Amish way of farming, rooted in ancient practices, restores the soil and health of land. When Amish families buy worn out, broken down farms, they restore the land with patient care and nurturing love -- love is the right word, rooted in a simple yet profound reverence for all living things as a manifestation of their theology. The history of the Amish and other Plain Peoples dates back to the 1600s, and their explicit rules on farming, technology, and other matters of sustainability have been part of their ordered life since that time. The Amish way also emphasizes maintaining sustainable communities through specific cultural practices, also written and explicit. So they've got some kind of sustainability education and acculturation built into their world view -- dating back well prior to Bucky Fuller. But it's not sustainable design education.

For that, I proposed Buckminster Fuller and Victor Papanek for their explicit efforts to introduce sustainability into design education, and it is this history of sustainable design education that is both relatively new and nearly unwritten. That's why Gulden has not found much. It's an interesting field, and a great opportunity for an enterprising scholar -- or several. I imagine we could find a place in our doctoral program for someone who wants to work on a topic like that, and possibly even fund it.

Reading David's note, I realized with some embarrassment that I should indeed have mentioned Martin Charter. The Center for Sustainable Design has been making vital contributions for many years, and the web site is rich in resources.

http://www.cfsd.org.uk/

Ann Thorpe's Design Activism network and newsletter are another important source, along with her books and research projects

http://designactivism.net/

As to the conversation between Gunnar and David on the industrial production of liquids by human beings, any visitor to Australia can you who to blame. It is neither engineers nor managers. It is the brewers.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

Telephone +61 3 9214 6755 
www.swinburne.edu.au/design