At the beginning of this course, I perceived environmental design as encompassing sustainable practices, recycling initiatives, & the integration of natural elements. However, as the semester progressed, I came to understand that design itself is a foundational component of creating a sustainable environment – one with the potential to influence &  benefit future generations.

“Cradle to Cradle” by William McDonough & Michael Braungart was an influential piece of reading for me, I found the principles raised in the text really thought-provoking & has made me reevaluate the way I view the world & my immediate surroundings in a different way. “Design is the first signal of human intention” is a quote that particularly resonated with me – highlighting the responsiblity that designers have within their projects, their important role to approach their work with purpose, forethought & consideration for the long-term impacts of the design on the world.

The debates undertaken throughout this course have provided valuable opportunities to engage with different perspectives on practices such as circularity, design responsibility, & material innovation. The process of researching arguments for each debate significantly deepened my understanding of environmental designs when it comes to products, architecture & urban planning. A particularly compelling concept I encountered was Jane Bennett’s notion of “scale-linking” from “Vibrant Matter”. This is the idea that localized environmental design choices can manifest at larger scales (flooding from poor water management, damaging ecosystems & life), this prompted me to think more about how big impacts can grow.

As an artist (mainly digital), I thought that this course wouldn’t exactly tie into my own practice as much as it would for an Interior Design or Design for Change student. However, through a debate, I found that even digital artworks can affect the planet as much as traditional media – this has made me much more conscious about my work & deleting any unused works I have. I believe that as technology & digital media is constantly developing, more & more artists will be affecting the planet without them even knowing.

This course has highlighted the importance of responsibility within design & has prompted me to reflect on how I could improve my work as a designer to influence the environment positively. It has made me realize our collective responsibility both as designers & civilians to take care of our environment as much as we can & both sides affect each other cyclically. I found the theoretical examples from readings extremely influential & I enjoyed learning about the different ways people think about the design process & how they view the world. Tony Fry’s “Design Futuring” further reinforces this idea that the world is constantly evolving, repairing & improving – this, alongside the massive technological advancements we have made over the past century, has given me a positive outlook on the future for generations to come.

Despite all the damage we have done through destruction & production, I feel that this course has given me great insight into how we can improve our planet through material subsitution & working with different processes & systems.

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Braungart, M. and Mcdonough, W. (2002). Cradle to cradle. Heeswijk: Search Knowledge ; [Schiedam.

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.

Fry, T. (2018). DESIGN FUTURING : sustainability, ethics and new practice. Berg.

Nov 27, 2024

Whilst studying this week’s reading Ecological Design by Sim Van Der Ryn & Stuart Cowan, there was a section in which they explored the history & background to ecological design – mentioning precedents such as William Morris’ Arts & Crafts Movement, Dymaxion houses, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture & more. I was especially intrigued by Ebenezer Howard’s garden city concept.

“Garden Cities” emerged in 1898 through Howard’s book To Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. The concept was a visionary solution to the overcrowded & polluted cities of the Industrial Revolution. The main aims of the cities were to combine urban & rural benefits – blending vibrancies of cities with tranquility & health benefits of the countryside. He mainly achieved this by including “greenbelts” around these communities – a small area of open space to preserve land around cities for agriculture & access to nature.

Ebenezer Howard’s vision for a group of “Smokeless, Slumless Cities”, 1898.

The concept was introduced to Letchworth in 1903, becoming the first garden city to be developed. It featured planned residential neighbourhoods with communal green spaces & agricultural land. This continues to serve as a case study for more sustainable planning. Eventually, Welwyn Garden City was developed in 1920, this time combining Howard’s vision with more modern urban elements (specifically transport).

The three “magnets” of Garden Cities (1898), Ebenezer Howard.

Despite the many ambitions that garden cities housed, there were a lot of challenges within the project. Housing in the garden cities eventually became unaffordable for workers, which is a large problem still prevalent today. Urban areas with high population densities struggled to apply the expansive designs that Howard envisioned too, which raises the question about how to adapt these elements in such small spaces. As time went on, cities across the country increased their population, so the success of this concept got more & more questionable.

(Pictured right) Sketch of Welwyn Garden City, Natalie Foster.

The concepts seen in Howard’s vision are still echoed today – green belts & urban growth speficially have played a large role in preventing urban sprawl, seen in large cities such as London. These areas preserve ecosystems while limiting expansion of urban spaces & gives people a space to relax & take a break from the business of the city itself. Sustainable practices are a lot more common nowadays too, the incorporation of parks, bike lines & pedestrian-friendly streets reflect Howard’s vision for a more human-centric environment.

As there is still so much to consider in the present if we want to introduce this type of planning into our own environments, there are ways to possibly modernize the garden city vision. Vertical green spaces could make green spaces a lot more accessable & viable in densely populated areas, rooftop gardens are already quite popular in places such as New York, Tokyo & Chicago. Technology is also something that has improved significantly since the garden city concept was introduced, helping us immensely over the years through energy efficiency practices & improved public transport.

Letchworth Garden City (2023), Loveletchworth.com

In short, the garden city concept was a groundbreaking idea in the early 1900’s as sustainability was still a relatively new practice. I believe that we can still use this urban planning as a foundation for future improvements to cities, our technological advancements have changed our streets dramatically over the past century, so with tweaking this concept can help improve our environment greatly. I find this concept really interesting, I love the layout of the garden city & I find it amazing that the cities in Letchworth & Welwyn are pretty much still the same.

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Van and Cowan, S. (1996). Ecological Design.

Britannica (2019). Garden city | urban planning. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/garden-city-urban-planning.

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Garden city movement. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement.

Wainwright, O. (2014). The garden city movement: from Ebenezer to Ebbsfleet. The Guardian. [online] 17 Mar. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/mar/17/ebbsfleet-garden-city-george-osborne.

Angermann, M. (2022). Garden City Movement: History, Examples and Criticism. [online] Utopia. Available at: https://utopia.org/guide/garden-city-movement-history-examples-and-criticism/.

Anon, (n.d.). Garden City. [online] Available at: https://www.townandcountryplanninginfo.com/2020/08/garden-city.html.

loveletchworth.com. (2023). Letchworth Garden City History. [online] Available at: https://loveletchworth.com/about-and-history/.

Nov 22, 2024

For this week’s debate, I was placed on the side of against for the theme exploring the concept of humanity falling in love with plastic again.

This topic is really relevant for me, as my studies in my current MA Illustration project emphasizes the relationship between humans & the natural world, focussing on how the environment affects the human mind positively. Plastic waste is something I encounter in my daily life – when visting these environments in person, the pollution really interrupts the serenity of the scene I’m trying to depict. It’s difficult to show the restorative affects of nature when it’s destroyed by human-made waste.

There is so much plastic waste existing in the environment already before we should even think about falling in love with plastic again. An estimated 8 million metric tons enter the ocean every year – harming marine life & entering the food chain through ingestion of microplastics. The World Economic Forum conducted a 2016 study that showed if we kept at this rate, plastics would outweigh fish by the year 2050. This is an absurd statistic, it makes me wonder is plastic really worth disrupting various natural ecosystems simply because it’s a cheap material that can be replaced with many different materials?

Plastic in the Ocean Infographic (2019), Ocean Conservancy.

The book Accumulation: the material politics of plastic by Jennifer Gabrys brings up a lot of good points for this argument about plastic. Gabrys delves deeper into the political & economical consequences of plastic – she explains that plastic is a product of “petrochemical capitalism”, which means that it is intricately tied to the oil industry.

Without realising it, people that continue to buy plastic unknowingly support this exploitative system that prioritises profit over people & the planet. Essentially, falling in love with plastic means supporting an oil dependant economy – it also undermines global efforts to transition to sustainable energy & materials. I feel like this is a great point, a lot of people are unknowingly contributing to the constant production of plastic (more people are buying = let’s make more) – therefore contributing to the damaging process.

Gabrys discusses how the petroleum industry’s economic power ensures a constant over production of plastic, continuing to harm the environment & locking us into unsustainable production cycles. In short, Gabrys argues that plastic production benefits money hungry corporations while burdening marginalized communities with pollution & waste. I find her view really interesting, the points that she made opened my eyes & allowed me to see this argument from a different point of view which I never even thought about. Plastic production is something that isn’t talked about at all, never mind the negative affects it has. As a society, we are mainly concerned about how the result of a product (plastic) affects our immediate environment, not even thinking about the process of it & how that can contribute to damage as well.

(Pictured right) Sketch of a plastic bag 2024, Natalie Foster.

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Gabrys, J., Hawkins, G. and Michael, M. (2017). Accumulation : the material politics of plastic. London: Routledge.

Nov 17, 2024

This week, the reading material was “Vibrant Matter” by Jane Bennett. Her work explores the subject of objects having some sort of agency or liveliness, as if they’re on the same conscious level as living beings.

The term “vital materialism” explores this similar concept, essentially stressing the fact that all matter has the energy to influence the world around it. Everything has the ability to act, affect & be affected. In retrospect, vital materialism provides a more ecological/ethical way of interacting with our environment & the objects within it – if we recognise & respect the role of all materials around us, we see them as participants within our live rather than passive. However, many people argue that vital materialism is quite radical as it challenges the beliefs about the nature of life & the relationships between humans & the environment. Western ideology is that only humans or animals have the ability to act with purpose, so including objects within that bracket is absurd. This concept questions the boundary between humans & nature, as well as disrupting hierarchies by placing nature on the same level.

I find this idea a really interesting way of viewing the environment & it’s a great way of respecting it, however I can see the point that objects shouldn’t be placed on the same level as living things. While it’s true that objects can affect us whether we see it or not, I just find it odd to view them as “living things”. I can see how this view can positively affect my environment in the future as if everyone treats objects with “respect”

in the same way as other beings, people will pay more attention to waste & pollution.

Bennett also talks about “assemblages” which are a set of collective interactions between humans & non-human components. All influence one another – a good example of this would be a city, or a park (humans, animals, as well as buildings, plants, air, man made paths, cars etc.). Each component holds its own energy & are completely different, yet whe they’re together they make something new. Assemblages are an important part of her theorising as they show agency isn’t limited to individual things but can be evident in the relationship between things. An example of this is a black out – it’s not completely caused by power lines/weather conditions but by the interaction between weather/buildings/infrastructure. This concept was hard to wrap my head around at first, however I slowly began to understand – everything does have the power to affect & be affected & I find it interesting that a group of simple objects or beings can make no sense individually, but together they create something new.

(Pictured right) Sketch of people in a city crossing the road 2024, Natalie Foster.

Vibrant matter presents a lot of eye opening ideas, it has definitely changed the way that I view the world now – all objects & materials affect us in our day to day life, so it’s important to pay mind to them, their processes & where they could possibly end up.

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Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.

Nov 9, 2024