Wow.

This first week was intense! I will try to summarise what I absolutely want to remember of my readings and lectures.

DECONSTRUCT

Children are known to ask adults the same question again and again. ‘Why?’ I would situate the designer somewhere between the curious child and the meticulous criminal investigator, always looking for the cause of the cause of the problem… Not treating the problem in its depth would just provide the world with another superficial short-term solution, that can turn into another problem.

Because when design does not evaluate its impacts globally, it can become very harmful. Indeed, we can blame design for many of the environmental problems that we face today. In our mainly capitalist society of mass-consumption, design participated in the massive extraction of resources, the making of waste, the pollution caused by manufacturing, as well as the transformation of lifestyles and therefore of mentalities. An example: World War 1, because of its industrialized warfare in which designers played an important role, directly destroyed fauna, flora and soil, and had an undirect disastrous role in resource extraction but also on food uncontrolled production and distribution systems (Environmental Histories of Design, by Fallen and Jorgensen, 2017).

Considering impacts on the environment isn’t intuitive because of our anthropocentric way of seeing the world as a culture/nature dichotomy, as if what is not directly human-related had nothing to do with humans. The truth is culture and nature is totally entangled one to another, as much as humans are part of the environment, and continue to act against this will only lead to the destruction of both.

Reconstruct?

At this point, I can already draw some of the multiple guidelines for sustainable design. To start with ecology, we need to break the culture-over-nature hierarchy and cherish the entanglement of both concepts. This is essential to the shift towards a non-anthropocentric design (and a not-only-user-centered design?). Then, we need to accept that the world is constantly breaking and reinvented at the same time, to constantly try to re-solve the world’s wicked problems, instead of trying to solve them.

Design is powerful. It can cause destruction, now let’s use it to heal…

Note to myself: investigate on slow design…

Deconstructing Design / Emilie Schaefer Schaefer / Environmental Design: Materials, Ecologies, Futures (2020-2021)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0