a designer, what can I do to make the world more sustainable?
First, designers can understand the breadth of sustainability and the strategies for developing more sustainable solutions. This is pretty easy (and is covered in this book). Next, designers can start using these strategies in their work, even if only a few at a time. We need to become advocates of sustainability issues for our own organizations and our clients, partners, and other stakeholders. We can address sustainability issues in our projects whether our clients and organizations appreciate them or not, making more sustainable solutions even when those around us don’t do so.
Over time, designers can address more issues and integrate more strategies into their work naturally. This is easiest when all team members are aware of the issues and strategies and when sustainability becomes part of the process. Ultimately, sustainability is most powerful when it becomes part of an organization’s values and mission, but we don’t need to wait for this to begin in order to have an impact now.
Foreword
Design.
The word conjures images of effete eccentrics imposing cuboidal-built environments, clashing color, tortured fashion, and over rated celebrity upon the jaded palates of urbanites with too much money.
This book is not about that.
Nathan brings the competence of a mechanic, the mind of an engineer, the training of an MBA, and the pen of a poet to a topic long abandoned to people with delusions of adequacy. He talks about solutions, ones that deliver desired outcomes, and how to implement them.
His focus is the design of a world that works; as he says, “Don’t do things today that make tomorrow worse.” Good advice.
This book presents a systems approach to crafting answers to the really big challenges, including how to meet human needs on a planet on which all major ecosystems are in decline, and it’s a race to see which will melt first, the Arctic or the economy.
Most of us, if we think about design at all, consider color, or perhaps shape. But reflect that every human artifact was designed by someone. This person made deliberate choices about the utility of the object, the materials used to make it, the manufacturing process chosen, the length of its useful life, and what would happen to it after it was no longer needed. Consciously or by choosing to ignore opportunities, we have created a world in which half a trillion tons of stuff is pulled from the Earth each year, put through various resource-crunching activities, shaped (at great energy cost) into a form, and then thrown away. Of all this stuff, less than one percent is still in use six months after sale. All the rest is waste.
At the moment of conception of an idea, a design, a thought of a product or a process, 80 to 90 percent of the lifetime cost of that widget, program, or pickup truck was committed.
Investing in how designers think, in how we all approach a new idea, is thus crucial if life as we know it is to thrive on this planet.
Nathan has given us the mental model to begin that exploration. He does so with a soft touch, but a ruthless honesty. One of my favorites of his lines is, “Get over the guilt or shock or outrage or embarrassment or disagreement now, because none of it will be useful. We have a lot of work to do.”
It is almost axiomatic that designers are arrogant and indulgent. Nathan is not. He delivers an outstanding primer on the precepts of sustainability, the challenges facing the world, and pragmatic answers in a playful and accessible manner. This book should be part of any curriculum on design, innovation, business, environmental studies, marketing, public policy, engineering, organizational development, and the now rapidly emergent field of sustainability. It should be on the desk of CEOs of all companies that make or deliver anything. It will be required reading for all of my students, and a frequently recommended treat for the companies with whom I consult.
It should be the next book you buy.
—L. Hunter Lovins Author of Natural Capitalism and Sustainability Chair, Presidio School of Management
Introduction
This isn’t a book about sustainable design. Instead, it’s a book about how the design industry can approach the world in a more sustainable way. Design is interconnected—to engineering, management, production, customer experiences, and to the planet. Discussing and comprehending the relationship between design and sustainability requires a systems perspective to see these relationships clearly.
I hate discussions that start with definitions, but the truth is that the terms “sustainable” and “design” at the beginning of the 21st century are both malleable and subjective enough to warrant an explanation. However, I’ll try to get the definitions out of the way quickly and efficiently to get to the larger discussion.
This … is a book about how the design industry can approach the world in a more sustainable way.
What Is Sustainability?
Design is in great transition, thankfully. Traditionally, design has been practiced with a focus on appearance, whether it is represented in graphic, interior, industrial, fashion, furniture, automotive, marine, or any other kind of design. In truth, design has never been merely about appearance, although that’s been the most prominent phenomenon throughout its history. In addition, other disciplines use the word “design” to describe other functions, such as structuring databases, systems, services, or organizations (further confusing its use and meaning). But there have been moments in design’s past where truly great designers showed us that design was also concerned with performance, understanding, communication, emotion, desire, meaning, and humanity itself, even though these haven’t been the most lasting movements.
Ultimately, this is the design that I want to speak about in this book—design that encompasses the synthesis of usefulness, usability, desirability, appropriateness, balance, and systems that lead to better solutions, more opportunities, and better conditions, no matter what the endeavor or domain.
In the end, there is no reason that great design can’t be beautiful and meaningful and sustainable.
Sustainability, too, isn’t well defined—even by its own practitioners. To many, it is synonymous with green[1] (not that green is any more clear) or eco, meaning the environment. To others, it connotes bleeding-heart nouveau hippies, who seem more concerned with plants and animals than people. Sometimes, it’s portrayed as a way to promote old, flawed economics as a way of ensuring “business as usual.” Often, it’s a threat to a way of life that can only, possibly, mean less of everything. Or it can be interpreted as a rational blend of constraints both large and small and a way to serve
human needs on all levels, as well as those of other systems.
Sustainability means more than all of this. It refers to human and financial issues as much as environmental ones. The systems perspective inherent in sustainability encompasses cultural impacts as well as ecological ones, financial constraints as well as physical limits, and heritage and legacy as well as a perspective about the future.
The most agreed-upon definition of sustainability comes from the Brundtland Commission[2] and dates back to 1987:
(Use and) development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Put
