Awareness & Applying Sustainability in Design Globally
This week’s articles “The Environment, Product Aesthetics and Surface” by Stuart Walker and “Design for a Sustainable World” written by Victor Margolin focuses on the environmental issues applied to products, the approach of designing sustainably. and the importance as a designer is to be aware of these issues to our quality of life.
In the “The Environment, Product Aesthetics and Surface” article, Walker discusses the main negative factors of unsustainable concept that is caused by a constant increase of production, consumptions, use and disposal of products in the economically developed countries. He continues in a border spectrum that the fundamental and long-lasting change can be maintained if the promotion of industrial growth in the developing countries and increase in consumerism and the exploitation of low-paid employees to produce goods. In result, changes are slowly occurring on a global scale and if a different set of priorities and expectations pertaining to product acquisition such as longevity, durability, ease of maintenance and repair, upgradability, etc. are considered, it will create a positive implication for product design and aesthetics. (Walker, 16).
To address the environmental issues within the products and product design, the author goes in depth about the problem and provides the reasoning and the possible change if considered, which I believe as a designer we should take notes on. He continues to emphasize the life cycle assessment that involves 4 stages: initiation, inventory analysis, impact assessment and improvement assessment. This useful tool will assess comparable and existing products where it analyzes quantitative and qualitative impacts. However, in order to carry out the LCA, it is essential that the product must exist and be attainable through research or experiment. (Walker, 181).
Generally speaking, we automatically refer aesthetics to beauty and visual aspects but do not really consider anything else in terms of if the product is sustainable or environmentally positive. If there is environmentally responsible design, this leads to the question to why should its aesthetics be any different from those of irresponsible design? (Walker, 183). Well, the environmentally responsible design will contribute to change and lasting alleviation of environmental degradation from product manufacture. In addition, Walker interestingly mentions the aesthetic experiences of an object is an interlink to sensory response and contemplative experience meaning how we perceive the beauty of the product versus its significance and value of the product. “Our ideas of what is beautiful and tasteful will develop from and within an environmentally responsible frame of reference.” (Walker, 186).
Moving forward to the second article called, “Design for a Sustainable World” by Victor Margolin, he discusses the environmental issues globally and what are ways we can make it more sustainable. The author references Victor Papanek’s book called, “Design for the Real World” about working with people in developed countries to create products by using low technology, designing for the disabled, and creating the goods to counter growing environmental problems. (Margolin, 83). He compared Papanek’s proposition with R. Buckminster Fuller’s perspective of using advanced technology instead of sustainable development. He continues stating that the focus of designing for sustainability is how to reinvent the design culture so that worthwhile projects are more clearly identified. Along with this, designers have a narrow perspective in product design due to insufficient attention to knowledge and working with natural sciences and social sciences. This indicates that designers is lacking the power of imagination and are not producing the right designs that are needed. Therefore, designers must find ways to rethink and redesign for humankind problems. An important quote he referenced by Kenji Ekwan, “What design can and must do is the proposal of new life image and lifestyle that is compatible with the environment in daily life, home life, global life, and life in the workplace.”
Comparing and contrasting the two articles, both are very similar in terms of addressing design environmentally and sustainably. However, Walker focuses more on the aesthetic aspects of the environmental issues whereas Margolan mentions the overall global concerns that decline the environment. I acknowledge both articles, I think it is important to consider the environmental factors in designing. I never really consider this different perspective when designing. From my understanding, the first article emphases the importance to understand and take notes on the environmental stewardship and the principles of sustainability to design because it will provide us have good visual qualities of existing materials and develop a new innovative product that will redefine our aesthetic expectation. For the second article, Margolin really stresses about how industrial designers have to rethink their practice to better our economically and globally and I agree with the author because with high demands of resources, this will cause an environmental degradation with the lack of attention.
~Word Count: 782
Discussion:
- Think of examples of sustainable design. Does the product give you a sensory response or contemplative experience instead?
- Do you think sustainable design compared to other aspects of design be more superior when designing? What are ways we can make it more acknowledgeable in the design world?
Work Cited:
Walker, Stuart. “The Environment, Product Aesthetics and Surface.” Design Issues 11.3 (Autumn, 1995): 15–27
Margolin, Victor. “Design for a Sustainable World.” Design Issues 14.2 (Summer 1998): 83–92
