Sustainability Design Trends

The issue 11/July 2009 David Report A Checklist for Sustainability answers the question of how a company can best conceptualize sustainable design.
In this report, there are seven issues brought forth as important aspects of sustainable design (“the seven spokes of the Sustainable Wheel”, as Designboost would call it):

•ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

•INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT

•AFFECTIVITY

•AESTHETICS

•MULTI QUALITY

•AUTHENTICITY

•COMPATIBILITY

To simplify things quite a bit, allow me to delineate what I see as key points for each of these terms: Environmental Influence is when a company purposefully uses resources and minimizes waste; Innovative Development is the creative process of innovating and transforming design with an eye toward sustainability; Affectivity can be achieved through creating emotion and attachment in product and design; Aesthetics is the process by which products age with grace even when the idea of specific ‘beauty’ changes; Multi-Quality is a product with enduring value and many potential uses in a lifespan; Authenticity is a sense of history and cultural identity; and Compatibility is design that invokes the past-present-future link and encourages sharing across uses, generations and platforms. The David Report emphasizes that sustainability works best when companies and designers take a holistic approach, incorporating each of these seven ideas. Smart Playhouses is a company that subscribes to these principles in manufacturing, shipping, storing, purpose and meaning – the playhouses were developed to be stored and used outside by both kids and adults throughout the life-cycle of the family and beyond. The houses are interesting and utilitarian works of art in themselves, spaces full of possibilities through years of use.

In the report immediately preceding that, the issue 10/October 2008 David Report 5 Key Design Trends introduces some interesting hybrid words that speak to this new design trend of sustainability. These neologisms are combinations of terms that are meaningful and important to the sustainability movement and are increasingly becoming touchstones in contemporary design. These terms are Cooltural, Rationaissance, Responsibiz, and Sensuctive. By creating hybrid words, The David Report is emphasizing the interconnected nature of the two ideas involved in each term.

To better understand these terms, perhaps it would be informative to look at some contemporary companies and how the application of these terms in the design of products is playing a central role in branding and communication with its intended audience.

COOLTURAL = COOL + CULTURAL

Cooltural is the idea that products can have their own personality and strong story to tell. This idea comes from a searching for genuiness and uniqueness in products – something perhaps borrowed, but in any case something that has its own authenticity. An excellent example is the embroidery art hangings from ETSY user Castle. Her about page states,

CASTLE was founded in 2008 by Rachel Castle with a small range of bedlinen made for friends and family. Considerable interest ensured CASTLE quickly became a commercial venture. The brand represents a love of beautiful, often handcrafted or handprinted, pieces for the home.

Rachel Castle has spent the past 20 years working in the homewear industry both in Australia and abroad. Prior to CASTLE, Rachel was joint founder of London-based branding and design agency, The Nest, and before that, worked for The Conran Shop in the UK. She regularly styles and writes for Australian lifestyle magazines, and currently lives in Sydney.

All handmade artworks are sewn by Rachel Castle and her very patient and loving mother, Jillian Patching.

Ms. Castle’s embroideries are excellent examples of design personifying a brand. Her hangings are all handmade with vintage materials and hand sewn by her and her mother. There is a story and a uniqueness to each piece made – indeed, there cannot be two identical pieces made! Ms. Castle is creating individual, genuine pieces of art/craft with old, ‘borrowed’ materials which are transformed into cool modern textile art. Ms. Castle’s embroideries are cooltural.

RATIONAISSANCE= RATIONALISM+RENAISSANCE

This combination focuses on the idea of objects having a past, a present and a future. It’s about things that are functional but stylish or iconic. Some aspects of the design may be borrowed from the past but the design itself is subtle. There is an implied longevity in the design and product. An example of rationaissance is WeWood watches. From the website:

WEWOOD has emerged out of Italy as an emblem of eco-luxury and design, committed to the health of our planet. WEWOOD is the avant-garde approach to sophisticated sustainability.

WEWOOD lets us rediscover nature in its beauty, its simplicity and inspired design. It reminds us of a tree’s powerful way of life; rooted, yet reaching.

Completely absent of artificial and toxic materials, the WEWOOD Timepiece is as natural as your wrist. It respects your skin as you respect nature by choosing it. Your WEWOOD Watch breathes the same air that you breathe and may awaken memories from another time and place. Your WEWOOD Watch records your sensations and shares your experiences as the perfect natural mate, whose story also becomes yours to wear, smell and feel.

A philosophy not implemented is only a dream. Conversely, when you get your WEWOOD Timepiece, you can feel confident you’re making a difference. One Timepiece plants one tree, and together we help to ensure the health and survival of the natural world.

One Watch – One Tree – One Planet

As you can see, a WeWood design is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship which drives desire, but the background of this object creates a connection between the consumer and nature with its long history and past. It is a functional timepiece with an iconic style and hearty build which promises a long-wearing future. The addition of a connection between consuming (buying the watch) and sustainability (planting a tree) creates a humanist approach to consumerism. WeWood watches encapsulate the idea of rationaissance.

RESPONSIBIZ=RESPONSIBLE+BUISINESS

Responsibiz addresses the need for businesses to make products that benefit humans and society. Companies should be humanistic and low-impact – perhaps they re-use designs and objects but it should be done cleverly. The objects that companies produce should have a social and moral value to society. The design of the JWT Agency is a great example of responsibiz – the company’s architecture leans heavily toward sustainability, the inclusion of natural materials and plenteous foliage, and exacting green standards as well as being structured around a very humanist approach – the office of the president is, for instance, the first-floor office right in the middle of the action. From the website:

The lobby navigates alternatively between geometrical and unruly lines like these megabit landscapes in the form of seating, immediately counter-balanced by an effusion of plants, cascading from the ceiling that will prompt music when gently brushed against, inaugurating the plant mixing! A plant juke box developed with the artist group Scenocosme and whose play-list is updated by the creative members of the agency.

The design of the agency is driving the very operation of the company itself; the architecture of the JWT Agency is definitely responsibiz.

SENSUCTIVE=SENSUAL+SEDUCTIVE

Sensuctive plays on the human need for meaning, providing design that fuels our dreams of self-improvement, happiness, etc. These objects can be mystic and often have a feeling of being grounded in nature but transcending it for our benefit. A good example of this is the GreenWall by ETSY seller GreenWallNL. Regarding the genesis of her plant wall hangings, she says,

I’m an architect from The Netherlands and have been completely fascinated by the GreenWalls of Patrick Blanc that are starting to show up all around the world. Half a year ago, I built my own GreenWall in my living room. I’m still figuring out what type of plants I could use best, how much water and light is needed, but it keeps me busy :)
Everyone has been really enthusiastic about the wall and that’s when I decided to create some smaller DIY kits for people to use at home. That’s how my little shop started.
Apart from going green, I have been making paper lampshades for a while now, which I thought I would share with the world!

This seller’s mission is to share the lushness of a wall of green, a sort of domestication of vegetation while at the same time she hopes to beautiful the home in a unique, sustainable way. Her lamp shades are made from recycled paper and evoke a mystical feeling with the shapes and swirling shadows of the light. The consumer can feel satisfied about their choice of decoration because of the materials involved – the lush and sensible nature of the object itself is the point of the Etsy shop. The designs inside invoke a mystic human connection with nature and wise caretaking, aspects which embody the sensuctive nature of the objects in GreenWallNL’s ETSY store.

In all these cases the design of these beautiful objects, architecture and companies are driving branding and communications with their audience. Though it has been said in the past that design is about solving problems, in modern culture design is about something more: it’s about sustainability, about creating meaning and being responsible to humans and the environment alike. It’s about telling stories and borrowing ideas, about communicating and simplifying. Design is about creating inspiration and transmitting experiences. As Bruce Mau said, “It’s not about the design world, it’s about how we design the world.”

REFERENCES:

http://static.davidreport.com/pdf/353.pdf

http://static.davidreport.com/pdf/360.pdf

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-neologism.htm

Obviously this short paper can only brush the surface of these structure, objects, and locations. For more information, please see:

PRODUCTS AND COMPANIES

http://www.smartplayhouse.com/en/faq

http://we-wood.us/

http://www.etsy.com/people/GreenWallNL

http://www.castleandthings.com.au/pages.php?pageid=1

http://design-milk.com/jwt-agency-by-mathieu-lehanneur-and-ana-moussinet/

http://design-milk.com/nau-un-fcking-the-world/