Anthropology meets innovation in search of sustainable design....
During periods of environmental and societal upheaval, design has the potential to be a formidable catalyst towards a sustainable future. However, to unleash its full power, significant shifts in both theory and practice are imperative. I have just published The Future Designer. Anthropology meets Innovation in Search of Sustainable Design at Routledge, which ultimately argues that if we change the curricula of architecture and design education, we can solve many of the most pressing social problems, from the cooperation of citizens to sustainable cities. Following, is a brief overview of the book’s most important parts.
Design for humans not models
The global citizenry is continuously told that we are homo economicus, a self-serving, always rational creature that always wants more, and thus we must throw the old away. But, contrary to such neoclassical economic ideas, human evolution has always been context-sensitive and based on the cooperative management of shared resources within a group. Indeed, the consequences of profit maximization in a free-market economy show that the pursuit of narrow self-interest rarely leads to the development of common goods at a higher level, a phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons.
Darwinian multi-level selection theory coupled with contextual behavioral science systematize this truth and provide practical tools for aligning individual needs and interests with those of the group. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom outlined the necessary conditions to suppress individual selfishness and promote cooperation with her eight design principles. Such literature is particularly relevant in the volatile creative sector, where the business context changes rapidly and frequently due to technological disruptions.
Design for sustainable systems
As for individual overconsumption, perhaps the most satisfactory explanation for why we have become so careless with our commodities is Thorsten Veblen´s, conspicuously consumption. But we do not live alone, and as powerhouses of economic growth, cities now account for roughly 70 per cent of global carbon emissions and over 60 per cent of resource use. Modern runaway consumerism seems to follow some archaic patterns and when combined with planned obsolescence obviously has detrimental environmental consequences.
The most compelling transformation of the current linear economy into a system driven by intelligent production and consumption is the circular economy, based on the ideas of closing resource loops for large volumes of finite resources (used by organizations) to be captured and reused while opening innovation and information.
Nestled into the circular economy lies what is commonly labeled the sharing economy with business models based on use rather than property.
The traditional view of tangible products- including buildings- sold as units for private ownership must be replaced by a more holistic view of product–service–systems and that can only happen through the magic of design. Not everyone can own everything, not eight billion people and not on a hermetically sealed planet. However, sustainability is much more than just ecological, and some societal aspects leave much to be desired.
Design as applied ethics
As noble as ambitions of user-centred research in architecture and design may be, they are limited by the myopia of a human lifespan and thus our descendants’ shops will be full of products that they were never asked about, simply because they have not been born yet. Future-dwellers will also grapple with present externalities, that affront to anyone removed from a current economic transaction by space and time.
Design must be seen as guided ethical evolution and to reach a desirable target, the design process needs to be pre-emptive. An interesting approach to consider is constructive technology assessment where social problems surrounding technology are addressed by different stakeholders, including external expertise, designers and end-users. Similarly, quality by design is an approach both technical and human, and it is an approach that must be taught in departments of future architects and designers.
No profession is more ethically thorny than design because it primarily decides how our descendants will live according to lines of exclusivity, power and accumulation. Design decides now, our debt to them, then. And, akin to the indigenous of colonialism, many future dwellers will be conned out of their space. Especially, the curricula of design departments urgently need ethics, as it raises the flags under which we sail.
