Designing the green way

Vaibhav Gupta
Nov 5 · 2 min read

How sustainable are we as designers ourselves

Have you ever came across a brief that challenged you to design a product with minimal environmental impact. Or a time when you took it upon yourself to design with required consideration to environmental impact. It could be something as big as a multistory building to something as small as bottle cap. As designers it is part of our unsaid pledge to design considering the environment as primary concern and there are many who abide by that. Still, are we doing enough?

Typical image of my college studio before jury

If we take into account our design process, it itself is highly unsustainable in nature. Numerous printouts, scaled down models, presentation boards, stationery, sketch-sheets to uncountable single use cups of coffee. I still remember the heap of waste sheets we would produce in the attempt to design a net-zero building in my architecture course. Admit it or not, design is one of the most resource extensive field yet we’re the ones who should change that for good.

So what should we as responsible residents of this planet do on our parts? Frankly this answer is so simple yet so case specific. But on basic level, we need to start watching our own impact on nature while designing. Should we stop sketching on paper at all? Maybe no, but we can always make a judicious call when we can do away with other options.

We at UNI.xyz also took it as an en-devour to do our bit to contribute to environment. We try to maintain our office in most resource efficient manner, use minimal stationery and produce less waste. Also, starting November 2019 whenever someone registers for a competition on UNI, we plant a tree :) We believe that this small effort will make a significant impact. To begin with, we’re collaborating with some NGOs in New Delhi (Capital of India) which has recently been regarded as city with worst air quality globally. We’re also open to suggestion from the community for the cause. Also if you know a NGO for this cause, please suggest me at vaibhav@uni.xyz

Visual designer and Product developer at Uni.xyz

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