Hello, I’m Emilie! (W1)

Hello! I’m Emilie!

I’m a third-year interior design student from Waterloo, Belgium and I am really looking forward to this course.

I am very passionate about art and design, but I am equally passionate about our beautiful planet and its conservation. Growing up, I was lucky to move around the world and explore the amazing wonders of nature, so I want to learn more about how we can avoid harming it or, even better, help protect it. I have always been very interested in the relationship between design and the environment and, a couple years ago, got to have a closer look at it with a research paper on ecological safari lodges in the Masai Mara in Kenya and the different approaches they undertake to minimise their environmental impact in a place where their surrounding environment is key to their business and success. Nature is always such a big source of inspiration in my works and can almost more or less be found in them.

Figure 1: Pages from my portfolio of works inspired by nature.

In my field of study, I am now particularly interested in scenography and set design which are areas that could do a lot better in terms of its environmental impact and quantity of waste material produced. I also look forward to applying what I learn in this class to the retail project for my interior design course.

I unfortunately could not make it to the first seminar this week but had prepared the environmentally conscious piece of design I wanted to bring along which is simply the reusable coffee cup that I use everyday. As a coffee lover, the number of disposable coffee cups I was using and throwing away every week was quite a lot and investing in a reusable cup is a simple investment that has significantly reduced the amount of disposable cup I use.  The cup I use is also made of recycled materials which further reduces its environmental impact. Single use plastics and containers make up a big portion of individual waste and is something that can easily be reduced by everyone.

This week I got started on reading the ‘Environmental Histories of Design: Towards a New Research Agenda’ article by Kjetil Fallan and Fin Arne Jorgensen. So far, I find their argument that there is a need to make more efforts to to connect environmental history and design history very true. Their question ‘what does it mean to be an environmentalist and live in a world of things?’ has really stuck with me and is something I would like to pay more attention to in my everyday life. I look forward to hearing my classmates’ thoughts on this article during the reading group next Thursday.

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