Some thoughts on sustainable design

“We are responsible for the world in which we live not because it is an arbitrary construction of our choosing, but because it is sedimented out of particular practices that we have a role in shaping” (Barad 2007:203)

In the last blog post I dealt with the question 'What is design and does it make a difference?'   Today I want to take those ideas to look at the design of sustainable products.

In no way should this be a comprehensive discussion on the state of sustainable design, but more of a first attempt to link the ideas on the agency of humans and non-humans with contemporary practices in that field. The ideas I put forth in the previous post suggest that design plays a fundamental role in shaping our actions. This is the first consequence for designers, for as Barad’s quote above makes clear, through their work, designers make themselves accountable for the products they design and the actions they enable. Designers have used this realization of the importance of their work to promote the development of sustainable products and thus make human lifestyles a little bit more sustainable. Design, as informed by the Actor-Network-Theory, has the capacity to promote sustainability precisely because configurations of humans and non-humans can be changed “in such a way that we can intra-act responsibly” (Suchman 2007).

Environmental questions have been linked to design since the 1970s. Since then, design theory and practice concerned with environmental issues has been reinterpreted and broadened, taking the field from “green” design, to “ecodesign”, to “sustainable” design. Behind this transition lies the realization that environmental issues touch on all aspects of our daily lives and that the “global model of development” is in itself structurally unsustainable (Manzini 2010). This is similar to what Fry (2011) suggests. For the field of sustainable design this transition means that when designers were concerned with “Green Design” in the 1980s, the aim was to design artifacts that were considered less harmful for the environment. This could mean making changes to clothing fabrics and garments by using low-chemical organic materials instead of synthetic ones that are more polluting.

With the advent of the term ‘ecodesign’ in the late 1980s, the focus shifts to a systems approach, concerned not only with the redesign of single products, but often entire systems of products or even entire industries. One approach developed within that phase is the Lifecycle Assessment or Lifecycle Analysis (LCA). The aim of a lifecycle assessment is to quantify and balance a product’s environmental impact. This is done for all stages of its lifecycle: production, use and disposal. Recently, there has been a wave of critique on this type of approach, suggesting not only that its methodology lacks transparency and that the way the impact data is acquired heavily varies from one model to another, but also that the design proposals resulting from lifecycle analysis are insufficient to solve environmental problems.

In their article “The things that matter”, Verbeek and Kockelkoren present the work of a group of Dutch industrial designers called “Eternally Yours” who propose ways of making sustainable products that go beyond the “technical” solutions that Lifecycle Assessments offer. “Eternally Yours” sees the fundamental problem of making sustainable products as lying in a culture that throws away products before they start being unusable. With this we move from a focus on ‘ecodesign’ to the present stage: ‘sustainable design’. For designers, this move implies a shift away from the design of artifacts or systems of artifacts, to the design of ‘culture’. For “Eternally Yours” this shift means that instead of focusing on technical improvements regarding materials or fabrication processes, the most important work of sustainable design is to make products that people will not want to discard and replace at a high speed. They seek to increase the psychological lifespan of products.

From an anthropological perspective that regards things as important actors in shaping our actions, the reconsideration of design from the unit of the single product, to compromising users, their bond with things and modes of usage, is without a doubt a productive improvement in the creation of sustainable design. However, this shift in vision has also brought with it a change in focus from the material to the symbolic. In their article, Verbeek and Kockelkoren examine the work of “Eternally Yours” critically, concluding that trying to extend the ‘psychological lifespan’ of a product does little to solve the problems of sustainability. “Eternally Yours” tries to create and maintain the bond between a user and a product by making them appreciate the object, for example through choosing materials that seem more attractive with age, strengthening the relationship to companies and their services, or creating stories that “give products more “character””.

These ideas, Verbeek and Kockelkoren argue, “show a certain one-sidedness” as they do not work with material qualities of objects, but with nonmaterial signs. Even when looking at aged leather, “Eternally Yours” does not look at the material and what it does but at what it stands for: high attractiveness. In the end, a product like this could, and will probably be replaced with another one that has the same sign-value.

So?

From an anthropological perspective that recognizes things as what they are, sustainable design seems to benefit from its broadening of scope and from understanding sustainability in more integrated ways, an understanding that encompasses all aspects of culture. However, culture here must mean the relationship between people and material things, and not between people and signs.

The Actor-Network Theory helps understand the role of design in shaping our actions and thus brings forward a view in which design can (to a certain extent) change and improve environmental problems. As Manzini notes: “design can "give form" to a changing world, and "offer opportunities" for new types of behavior”. But since design is concerned with the intimate bond between people and things, the redesign of a world that is sustainable might be more complicated than contemporary design ‘solutions’ assume. After all, Fry’s quest for a redesign of design might be on the right track.

Here some recommended readings:
Design Anthropology (2013)
edited by Wendy Gunn, Ton Otto and Rachel Charlotte Smith

Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2008)
by Kate Fletcher

Design as Politics (2011)
by Tony Fry

The Designed World: Images, Objects, Environments (2010)
edited by Richard Buchanan, Dennis P. Doordan, and Victor Margolin.

What is design and does it make a difference?

The way one answers the question “Does design make a difference?” subsequently shapes one’s definition of what ‘design’ is. And how one answers this question depends on one’s understanding of the relation between humans and material objects. In this rather long blog post, I want to put forth an understanding of humans and objects informed by the Actor- Network-Theory. At its heart, the Actor-Network-Theory mobilizes the notion of ‘agency’ to explain human and non-human relations. I will argue that because agency is relational, design has the capacity to create and define human agency.

Meaning over matter?

Let us start this inquiry by challenging the assumption that design as the process of giving an object a specific material form, has any broader, sociocultural implications – let us argue that design makes absolutely no sociocultural difference. Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological study on the meanings of household object might help to prove this point.

Csikszentmihalyi conducted 82 interviews with different families in the Chicago area to find out how art affected the consciousness of the viewer. He quickly noticed that his informants had little to say about the ‘art’ objects that they owned, but they had a lot to say about other artifacts in their houses, which were charged with meanings and towards which they felt very strong attachments. Although there were quite a few (graphic) art objects among the mentioned artifacts, Csikszentmihalyi makes this interesting observation:

Of the 537 reasons given for cherishing the 136 graphic works, only sixteen percent had anything to do with how the picture looked. The objects were special because they: conveyed memories (sixteen percent), or referred to family members (seventeen percent), or to friends (thirteen percent). Formal qualities alone almost never made a picture valuable to its owner.

What this observation suggests is that the way an object looks, that its material and visual qualities, are not acknowledged by whoever uses or consumes the artifact. Rather it is the symbolic relationship between a person and his personal belongings that we have to look at. This observation poses a problem: How can we claim that design has any significant impact if people seem to see and choose ideas, signs and meanings over the actual object? Does the way things look not matter at all, then?

We do not need to be designers to sense that this claim is extremely reductionist. Csikszentmihalyi argues that visual qualities do indeed matter, but that it is not in a “natural” way that we respond to color and form. Instead, he suggests, these are “responses to meanings attached to configurations of color and form“. These responses result from a process in which visual qualities are linked to values. This is a highly cultural process, as these values develop within groups of people and can be “unanimous or contested, elite or popular, strong or vulnerable, depending on the integration of the culture.”. An interesting thing has happened here. In trying to prove wrong the link between the material qualities of objects and sociocultural aspects, we have instead unveiled its complex and deep entanglement. But Csikszentmihalyi view is not unproblematic, as we will see. It still leaves us in the world of signs.