Green Design for Society - Essay Example

Green Design for Society This article provides an introduction to this special issue of the journal on eco-design, and explores the various dimensions of the subject through a wide-ranging historio-graphical review of the literature on design and the environment. Introduction The 'environmental perspective' is deeply embedded in the social and political fabric of our existence. It has become a penetrating and pervasive feature of our daily lives, influencing our judgments, our moral positions, our systems of belief, and our everyday conduct. But, as with all fundamental social issues, the environmental perspective offers neither reconciliation nor peaceful resolution, but rather a set of tantalizing contradictions or divergent patterns of belief and action which constantly defy solutions yet persistently invite a striving for mediation (O'Riordan, 1976). The recent spate of publications on 'green design' tend to view the greening of design as a relatively straightforward process of applying certain environmental principles to the practice of designing products for industry, 'sustainable development' poses fundamental and uncomfortable challenges to the design status quo as it does to other professions and disciplines (Burall, 1991). Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Such criteria within the environment and development movement introduce into the debate over design, industry and ecology a whole range of issues that have been discussed in the ecological literature for at least three decades. Because this literature is by its very nature 'holistic', a study of design and ecology requires an inter- or multidisciplinary approach. Throughout its history environmentalism has been, if not overtly political, at least oppositional, and key texts are usually part of a continuing debate. It is this which makes a historical perspective particularly necessary because it can help to clarify the confusing range of current ideas and issues and explain their origins and thus begin to offer a critique of today's conventional wisdom. Changes in terminology, for example, can sometimes indicate changing values and priorities, although they can also disguise continuities. In the design field the change from 'alternative design' and 'design for need'-the catch-phrases of the 1970s -- to 'eco-design', 'green design', or 'environmentally affirmative design' in the 1980s and 1990s reveals an underlying shift in social and political attitudes. The study of design and ecology over the last twenty-five years can therefore help to contextualize current practice, and ecologically based research into the history of design in this and earlier periods can provide a new perspective on the nature of design in pre-industrial and industrial societies, and lead to the reassessment of familiar material. This review is not intended as a definitive introduction to such a history of ecological design but as a preliminary guide to the source material and literature in the relevant areas of design, ecology, and technology. Green Ideas and Issues: A Guide to the Ecological Literature It is impossible to approach the subject of design and the environment without delving into the ecological literature, because not only is there a paucity of material on ecological design but ecological design cannot be divorced from ecologism. However, the general literature on ecology and environmentalism is so enormous that it is difficult to know where to start and how to evaluate the different kinds of material available. What follows is a highly selective discussion over the design issues and history. The envisioning of structures, networks and facilities for the benefit of human beings. 'The planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end constitutes a design process' (Victor Papanek, 1975). The problem with much design is that it has inappropriate goals, usually financial ones. Green design -- 'design for the real world' (Papanek's phrase) -- is intimately linked with appropriate technology and 'design with nature'. Design and Ecology: from Design for Need to Green Design The ecological design movement which emerged in the 1970s can be said to consist of several interconnected strands: voices of dissent from within the design profession -- most notably Victor Papanek and Gui Bonsiepe; the Appropriate Technology movement associated with E. F. Schumacher and the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG); and Alternative or Radical Technology which developed out of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (Papanek, 1975). There are some signs that the issue of environment and development is being drawn into the design debate. In a recent review of the literature on industrial design in developing countries, Alpay Er and Langrish relate the paucity of literature to 'the general trend which defines design only in the specific cultural, social, economic, and political contexts of the industrialized market economies', although the situation has begun to change as design is discussed in the context of the industrializing LDCs or NICs. This raises the whole issue of the relationship between design and the Appropriate Technology (AT) movement in the last twenty to thirty years. While it is true to say that the Third World has largely been marginalized within the design debate, especially since the 1980s, it is also the case that design has been largely ignored in the development debate too. In the huge quantity of literature on Appropriate Technology published since the 1960s there is scarcely any direct reference to design, even though there are many cases where the failure of a product can be ascribed to the lack of design considerations. For example, many projects for fuel-efficient stoves in the last decade or so have tended to treat design as a technical problem and have failed to take user needs and ergonomic, social, and aesthetic factors fully into account1. This is partly a problem of definition: of identifying the precise dividing line between design and engineering; of defining the role of the designer in pre-industrial as opposed to industrial contexts; and deciding whether design is an activity confined to professional designers or is an everyday act by everybody. This was one of the contentious issues raised by Papanek in Design for the Real World where he defined design in extremely general terms and is probably one of the reasons why he was so fiercely attacked by professional designers. In fact, whether design is defined as primarily object-based or whether it is seen as a problem-solving activity related to the provision of everyday needs, much of the AT literature is clearly about design. The first Intermediate Technology publications in the 1960s were catalogues of relatively low-cost human or animal-powered machines produced by 'hole in the corner' firms in England at the time. These socially useful appropriate engineering products were early examples of what later became known as 'Design for Need'. AT publications continued to concentrate on the provision of products for different categories of need when 'Design for Need' went out of fashion among designers in the 1980s. Schumacher was the inspiration behind the Appropriate Technology movement. He was by training an economist, and his most influential book Small is Beautiful expressed his profound concern over the consequences of modern economic development and the materialist way of life it has created, in both industrialized and developing countries. What he wrote has many implications for design. The chapter on "Buddhist Economics', his most reprinted text, for example, provided a model of an alternative, nonviolent, sustainable economy which appealed to a generation reacting against Western consumer society in the 1960s and 1970s, and suggests an alternative, ecological approach to design too. An economic system based on Buddhist principles would not, he suggested, be concerned with the maximization of production but sufficiency for everyone's needs, with 'the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption' (E. F. Schumacher, 1973). There would be no place for a technology which mechanized production to increase the quantity of goods but at the same time destroyed the environment and the human value of work. Schumacher followed up these ideas in a series of lectures later published as Good Work. This has Morrisian overtones although Schumacher seems to have been more influenced by the writings of Gandhi, Coomaraswamy, and the Sarvodaya community development movement in India than by his nineteenth-century English predecessors. Schumacher adapted Gandhi's ideas of industry and technology to modern needs in the post-war period through the concept of intermediate technology. This was intended as a vast improvement for developing countries, on the primitive technology of the past, but at the same time simpler, cheaper, and less violent than the 'super-technology' of the rich. In 1965 Schumacher and others founded ITDG in order to adapt available technologies to the needs and resources of the poor through the development of appropriate tools and equipment. Appropriate Technology quickly replaced Intermediate Technology as a more neutral and acceptable term and Schumacher later referred to it as 'human-scale technology': simple, democratic, and participatory2. As the article by George Day and Simon Croxton on ITDG in this issue shows, the situation proved to be much more complex than Schumacher imagined; what was appropriate in any particular context was open to dispute and participation in development projects often proved to be more imaginary than real. These questions are fully discussed in the extensive literature on the AT movement. The AT Reader edited by Marilyn Carr is perhaps the best introduction to the theory and practice of Appropriate Technology because it contains selected texts on the definition, history, criticism, and development of AT -- ranging from Schumacher and Gandhi to more recent writings -- as well as looking at key areas of practice: agriculture, health, energy, housing, transport, manufacturing and recycling, and education (Carr, 1985). P. D. Dunn Appropriate Technology: Technology with a Human Face is a basic practical guide to the movement with many useful examples. Willoughby Technology Choice: A Critique of the Appropriate Technology Movement is concerned with theory, with the full range of concepts and debates over AT since its inception twenty-five years ago. He includes chapters on 'AT in the North' as well as 'AT in the South' and this indicates a change of emphasis which had occurred in the movement in the 1970s. What had originally been intended by Schumacher as a solution mainly for the developing countries was increasingly seen as relevant in the industrialized countries too and the concept of an alternative or radical technology, which was ecologically sound, non-polluting, small-scale, and decentralist, developed into a substantial movement in the 1970s. This was reflected in two books written on AT around 1980, when the term 'AT' was rather confusingly often used to refer to both Appropriate and Alternative Technology. Schumacher had intended to write Small is Possible as a sequel to Small is Beautiful but after his sudden death in 1977 it was written by his close friend and colleague George McRobie instead. Intended as a round-up of the achievements of the AT movement, it in fact devotes as much space to the alternatives movement in the 'rich' countries, Britain, the USA and Canada, as to AT in developing countries3. Similarly, Paper Heroes: A Review of Appropriate Technology, a scathing attack on the movement by Witold Rybcyznski, used the term AT to refer both to Schumacher and technology in the Third World, and to the alternative movement in Britain and America which had its origins in the youth culture of the 1960s. By the early 1970s there were many examples in theory and practice of this 'radical', 'community', or 'soft' technology which represented a rejection of post-war industrial society and enshrined a whole set of alternative values. These were perhaps best expressed in the writings of Ivan Illich who referred to the way in which industrial tools had created a lifeless, alienating, passive existence. By contrast a 'modern society of responsibly limited tools' would have the opposite effect, leading to self-reliance, respect for the environment and convivial forms of social life' (Illich, 1973). Publications like The Whole Earth Catalog were intended to provide access to such tools -- which did not literally mean tools as in the early ITDG publications but included anything from books to equipment as long as it was relevant to independent education, was high quality or low cost, and was easily available by mail. There were many examples of what constituted an 'alternative design', how to reuse, remake, and do with less, products based on low-impact technology and renewable energy. These were covered in Radical Technology, an equivalent source book published in England by the editors of the alternative technology magazine Undercurrents. It therefore covered all the areas of basic need: food, energy, shelter, materials, and communication from the point of view of self-build and do-it-yourself technology, and there are many design-related articles: on folk building, self-build, working with wood and metal, recycling materials, and transport issues. These are set within a political context, particularly in the annotated bibliography and directory by Peter Harper which, though now outdated, is still an excellent guide to the existing literature at the time, and in his section on 'Autonomy' which is a social and economic analysis of the possibilities of self-sufficiency. The Green Office in Britain: A Critical Analysis The search for Britain's most 'environmentally responsible' office building preoccupied architectural journalists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as several developments and conversions, which claimed to be 'environmentally aware', were under construction in London. 1 The most publicized of these was the London Ark, an innovative and exciting office building designed by the architect Ralph Erskine which squats over Hammersmith Flyover in West London, an area notorious for noise and air pollution. The bright airy interior offers a haven to office workers from the harsh external environment but its environmental credentials perhaps have more to do with the exterior copper cladding, destined to turn green, than to design policy. Erskine himself never claimed the Ark to be particularly 'green'. That it has been celebrated as such is symptomatic of the confusion surrounding the terms 'green' and 'environmentally responsible', as journalists, as well as building and design professionals, grapple with the issues. Exploited by the media, marketing people and the public alike, the terms have been used indiscriminately, with multiple meanings ranging from radical Green politics, to energy conservation, to healthy working environments. A comparison of these cases makes it possible to draw out some of the different meanings of 'green' and explain how recent changes in environmentalism have influenced contemporary office design. The concept of environmentally responsible architecture and design is not new. A radical 'green' movement in architecture and design flourished in the 1970s, but produced buildings which were domestic or small scale. The notion of 'green' commercial development only came to the fore during the economic boom of the 1980s, not only for economic reasons, but also as a result of social, political, and design factors. Changes in office design and practice since the 1950s coincided with changes within the environmental movement and the merger of these two factors may help to explain why the concept of green office design is currently fashionable. Responsible Business Spurred on by the need to be seen to be green as a consequence of wider public awareness of environmental issues, and induced by a steady flow of new and expected legislation on, for example, higher energy efficiency and building regulations, many companies are commissioning environmental audits and publishing corporate environmental policies. Such a policy is a signifier, a demonstration of values both to investors who may examine the company's environmental credentials and to a workforce choosy about their working conditions. Demographic forecasts predict that from the mid-1990s the number of eighteen year olds entering the British job market will be reduced by 20 per cent or more, therefore employers will have to compete for a more quality workforce. Simon Hodgkinson of Green Audits believes that 'a few hundred' British companies have already carried out an audit. The Guardian newspaper has recently commissioned an environmental audit of its financial department and taken advice on how to start a paper-recycling scheme. Several companies, including IBM, 3M, and Philips, have taken steps to act in advance of legislation, and some initiatives have been taken by individual entrepreneurs. The property developer, Godfrey Bradman, strictly controlled the specification and installation of materials which he considered hazardous to health and to the environment in his own office conversion in Marylebone Lane in 1989, published The Rosehaugh Guide to Healthy Buildings, and funded the text Buildings and Health, but Simon Hodgkinson of Green Audits believes that Bradman 'only scratched the surface in terms of potential for change in this area. It is not just CFCs and tropical timbers that have important environmental impacts, but the whole range of building materials in their extraction, manufacturing, use, and disposal.' The most successful scheme initiated so far in terms of interest has been the BREEAM assessment scheme launched in 1990, a scheme supported by the building industry, which aims to encourage higher environmental standards. Buildings are assessed on a range of eleven environmental impacts and a certificate issued showing credits for where the building comes up to standard. Although the scheme offers an incentive for developers and architects to concentrate on limiting global effects such as emissions of greenhouse gases and local effects like indoor air quality, it does not provide incentives to avoid materials used extensively in building which are considered to be detrimental to the environment -- for example, paints, plastics (particularly PVC), and timber treatments. Conclusions Green products help the environment, but that fact alone is not enough to cause companies to change designs. Greener products will happen if they reduce costs, increase revenues, if consumers demand them, or if governments provide incentives. Luckily, this is the case. The paper shows some of the difficulties of 'greening' the office. Inevitably, in practical terms, some compromises need to be made, but also, since the 'green office' resulted from both a perceived need to make workplaces more healthy and comfortable, and from the new mood of environmentalism which developed in the late 1980s, there are some contradictions here too. The green office can exemplify new trends in office design, with the addition of some new 'green' features, as in the case of the Ark, or it can be used as a symbol of the green policy of an organization, as in the offices for IBM and Greenpeace. It can be argued that the concept of a 'green office' is a contradiction in terms, since it is based more on commercial than ecological values. But for that very reason it may be justified by latter-day environmentalists: it is an embodiment of the compromises found within current environmental thinking which have resulted in 'green capitalism'. In this respect the green office can stand as a symbol of late-twentieth century environmentalism. Reference: T. O'Riordan, 1976. Environmentalism, Pion Ltd, p. VI. 2nd edition. P. Burall, 1991. Green Design, the Design Council. E. F. Schumacher, 1973. Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, Blond Briggs Ltd. M. Carr (ed.), 1985. The AT Reader: Theory and Practice in Appropriate Technology, IT Publications. I. Illich, 1973. Tools for Conviviality, Calder Boyars. V. Papanek, 1975. Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Thames & Hudson, London; and B. Vale, the Autonomous House: Design and Planning for Self-Sufficiency, Thames & Hudson, London. Notes This is discussed by G. Foley, The Energy Question, Penguin Books, 3rd ed, 1987, in chapter 12, 'Addressing the problem of wood fuel depletion', although not from a design point of view. Foley specialized in this area in the 1980s; see G. Foley P. Moss, Improved Cooking Stoves in Developing Countries, Earth scan, 1983. 'Toward a human-scale technology' in Good Work, op. cit., pp. 23-65. Small is Possible covered such areas as the Lucas Aerospace project, cooperative enterprises in Britain, and new communities in the USA. Read More