design activism

A Recent post by John Thackara on Design Observer led me to consider the prospects of design activism gone wrong. Thackara suggests that recent efforts by Architecture for Humanity and AMD, to design and build community internet centers, have missed the boat, as have efforts to design $100 laptops. In his view, other mobile technologies such as phones are quickly and more cheaply replacing the need for equipment that is far too expensive—even at $100—for populations of poor countries. His general point is that far from “teaching” developing countries how to do things, we in developed countries need to learn from their existing and inventive solutions using existing, cheap, low-energy-intensive technologies.

Although I don’t entirely agree with Thackara’s criticism of Architecture for Humanity and $100 computer initiatives, I do agree that activism can go wrong, or be perceived to go wrong. Here are a few examples.

The Red Cross
The San Francisco, Bay Area chapter of the Red Cross ran a campaign on earthquake preparedness with the tagline, “what do we have to do to get your attention.” They used portable billboards to create the illusion of well known buildings destroyed by earthquake. Karrie Jacobs , in a report in Metropolis Magazine, noted that at least one viewer did not appreciate the “scare tactic” and said, “It almost makes me regret the many times I’ve given money to them.” The point was to get people’s attention, because despite repeated earthquake preparedness campaigns, surveys show that only 6% of Bay Area residents are ready for a big one, and the figure stubbornly refuses to climb. Activists generally strive for media attention to bring their message to the target audiences –those who can enact change or change their behavior. But did the Red Cross judge their audience well enough?

Jill Palmer, Courtesy Red Cross Bay Area

Recycled Materials
A number of design activists stress the value of recycling and using recycled materials, but more than one critic has pointed out the potential inconvenience of creating supply chains that rely on streams of waste material. Does creating products out of recycled waste material basically guarantee a waste stream? A conflict of interest could arise when producers need a steady stream of waste to produce their products, and so wouldn’t want consumers to create less waste. I originally heard Pete Grogan, then at Weyerhauser (the forest and paper company), suggest this back in the late 1990s. McDonough and Brangaurt pick up on this idea in their book, Cradle to Cradle, by investigating how recycling perpetuates undesirable chemicals that find new life in inappropriate uses when one material is recycled into another that it was not intended for. Have design activists in this case been thinking too small about the changes that are needed?

PET, commonly recycled into other products
it was not initially intended for

Postwar Reconstruction
As urban civil conflicts become increasingly common, more architects are taking their activism into the effort of reconstruction. But Esther Charlesworth, founder of Architects without Frontiers and author of a book of the same name, notes that this arena is fraught with difficulties. In her own experiences in Bosnia, designers were involved in efforts to recreate iconic monuments (such as the Stari Most Bridge in Mostar), while many more significant design needs were ignored. She writes of her disillusionment with foreign architects (activists by another name), working in post-conflict cities, “Generally, they had little experience of working in divided political and physical landscapes and, as a result, tended to produce (and impose) quick fix design strategies that are attractive to international donors but which invariably denied or, in some cases, accelerated the underlying causes of conflict.” Charlesworth even has a term for this, “Trauma-Glam,” which she attributes to Richard Becherer. Have some humanitarian-aid architects gotten priorities wrong?

Conclusion
Activism can go wrong for any number of reasons, and we’ve seen a few here. Activists can answer the wrong question – as Thackara thinks some design activists working in development have. They can misjudge likely responses, as the Red Cross may have done. Activists can think too small, in the way that some critics think design using recycled materials may be doing. And activists can lose sight of priority issues, as some foreign architects might do when they get involved in post-war reconstruction.

One difficulty we have in assessing design activism is that although “actions” are often reported as news, we don’t necessarily find out how effective the actions were in moving the cause forward. If $100 laptops were to appeal to international funders to buy for third world schools, and not as Thackara suggests, for individual families to buy, then perhaps they would do some good. If the Red Cross shock tactic did get more people to prepare for an earthquake, then they achieved their aim. These reports that assess the outcome of activism are often missing, just as assessments of how various designed products and buildings perform in real life are also often missing.

Do you have any cases of “design activism gone wrong” to share?

This category contains my answers to questions that often come up regarding my book, The Designers Atlas of Sustainability. Recently I released an upgraded version of the book’s teaching guide, prompting Island Press to ask me some questions about the future of sustainable design education.

Q: What is the state of education in sustainable design at the university level?

A: It’s changing quickly. Ten years ago there were few programs that emphasized it, now there are many more. Some programs make it a particular focus, like the BA Product Design Sustainable Futures program where I used to teach (University College for the Creative Arts, U.K.). Other programs are maintaining a more “neutral” overall design focus, but adding individual classes or design briefs, on sustainability. Over the next decade I think we’ll see a lot more change as people gauge the expertise, emphasis and delivery needed for sustainable design.

Q: What’s the difference between green design and sustainable design, and how do these play out in the educational context?

A: “Green” or “eco” design is the practice of reducing or eliminating environmental impacts of design, whereas sustainable design is concerned with the environment, but also with social and economic issues. Design schools that take sustainable and green design to heart will ultimately have to articulate a vision for their program, not only in terms of the expertise they want in the faculty, but also the types of students they recruit and the employment their graduates gain.

what types of students will we recruit?
what skills should they learn?

For example, will your design program turn out business and legislative minded eco-designers that specialize in market competitiveness and compliance? Will it turn out social designers schooled in open source methods to facilitate “co-design” within communities? Will it turn out “service” designers (following the notion of replacing products with services) with special knowledge of hospitality and customer care? Ultimately I don’t think one program could offer all that and do it well. Eventually we’ll see specialties arising, particularly at the graduate level.

Q: What is needed to improve programs in this field?

A: There are a few things we need to think about. First, who can do the teaching? Although many design faculty members are interested and concerned about it, which is great, not many could turn around and deliver an astute, compelling class on it starting next week, the way they might be able to on “human factors in design” or “craft and materials.” A lot of people are now trying to “get up to speed,” and my teaching guide is meant to help that group as well as specialists. My experience is that sustainability isn’t a specialty that you can easily “buy in” to a faculty because for now, there aren’t that many specialists. Schools that invest in helping their faculties become experts will gain a long term advantage as prospective students and the wider economy assign higher value to sustainable outcomes.

Second, where will sustainable design graduates find jobs? Jobs in this field within industry are still relatively rare. That’s partly because many values associated with sustainability, such as social capital and natural capital, are not well reflected in the marketplace. Businesses have difficulty making money from it, so they don’t pursue it. The situation may change with more regulation or consumer pressure. Meanwhile, students who take sustainability to heart, who want to transform our current systems, immediately run up against a resistant industry. Yet there are other career paths for these graduates and we need to suggest more diverse models for design practice, models such as not-for-profit design studios, social enterprises, and public agencies.

Third, how long will it be before students arrive at college with a solid understanding of the ideas behind sustainability? Currently we have to begin at square one in teaching sustainability, which is difficult given the already crowded design curriculum. Over time elementary and secondary schools will probably include more on sustainability. But what message could we send now to prospective students about pre-requisite knowledge?

Q: What are some of the best examples of products that have been designed with sustainability principles in mind?

A: That’s a difficult one (see related post: “Q: best sustainable design examples?“). A design solution may hit the right cultural notes while overlooking significant ecological issues, such as a package design that helps elderly people but performs poorly in ecological terms. In my book I try to provide a framework for thinking about what makes a given example sustainable or not, on ecological, economic or cultural grounds.

Green design gets a lot of coverage, so let me highlight cultural sustainability, especially equity and long term well being. First, there’s humanitarian design work. This ranges from the eco-design housing solutions proposed for survivors of Hurricane Katrina to humanitarian products proposed by Project H Design or Design that Matters. Second, we’re seeing more investigation of design for the long term, from hundreds to thousands of years. An example is the Rosetta Disk, an analog object designed to last 2000 years to record the thousands of languages currently used on earth that are likely to be lost in the next 100 years. Third, fair trade and ethical sourcing are also surfacing more constructively with projects such as Rugmark, an effort to eliminate child labor in rug making, and “fashioning an ethical industry,” aimed at fashion design.

The long lasting Rosetta Disk

Q: Now that many design education programs are making strides toward sustainable design, what is the next big trend?

I think the next trend will be “social innovation” derived from improving our overall social capital (e.g. trust and social relationships). People are recognizing that we actually have a lot of good technology, but we don’t have the social means to apply it well. Energy efficiency is an obvious example; it saves money—yet many organizations aren’t doing it largely due to social and political obstacles.

Social innovation recognizes that even apparently technical and econonmic problems often have social solutions, so it looks to social relationships and social organizations for innovation, as opposed to relying on business and technology. We are already seeing “social enterprises,” organizations with primarily social agendas, oriented toward doing good without losing money, hence “non-loss” instead of “for profit” companiese (see related post “is there a fourth sector“). At the same time there are more new social “tools,” ranging from social networking to open source.

Consumption is a problem that requires largely social solutions

Social innovation poses a real challenge to designers who have traditionally focused on things (consumer goods, buildings) and selling things. I think we are going to see a shift toward exploring how design can facilitate relationships and social capital, perhaps using a “non loss” business. Sustainable consumption is a good example of a problem that designers can’t solve by creating and selling more things. Consumption comes down to issues of meaning and identity, issues that have to be resolved primarily through social relations, not things. The question is, what kind of training do designers need to understand and enhance social innovation? We are just starting to ask that question now.

Under the double negative banner “we cannot not change the world” a group has launched a forum for social design. They say, ” The SocialDesignSite aims to foster and facilitate a discourse on social design by establishing a unique interactive platform between everyone interested on the topic. We present innovative projects that help develop and sharpen our common understanding of social design in context and practice. ”

I love the idea behind this site, but in looking through a few of the projects it becomes clear that they are about designing social interactions and interventions, not about applying traditional design disciplines (eg architecture or product design) to social issues. Of course, there is some overlap between these two approaches, and a few of their social marketing examples (such as retired weapons graphics) illustrate the application of traditional design disciplines to redesigning social frameworks.

But to see what I mean, consider this example of the global village school that I found under keyword “conflict.” The school offers “an accredited, customizable K-12 homeschooling program via online and text-based curriculum, complete with individualized teacher services. Their curriculum integrates peace, justice, and diversity studies with the core subjects. ”

Still, I think the site will interest and inspire designers, as long as they know that it is not aimed explicitly at the traditional design disciplines, and rather, is aimed at the notion of redesigning social life using a variety of disciplines.

I read an interesting piece in the UC Berkeley Alumni magazine, California (yes I’m an alum) about how a single statistic can profoundly change our perspective on an issue—but only if we are presented with it in a certain way (“Numberstruck” by Pat Joseph). UC Berkeley’s Michael Ranney conducted research in which he asked people to estimate a statistic (e.g. what percentage of the population is in jail?) and then what they though an optimum statistic would be (eg what should our “target” jail population size be?) Then he revealed what the real incarceration rate was. If the actual rate is already lower than your stated “optimum”, then your view of the issue may change. In thinking about how this applies to design, first look at two more examples from Joseph’s article:

“The exercise of estimating values and stating preferences can itself be revealing. ‘One of the difficulties with people,’ Ranney notes, ‘is that they position themselves in a relative sense—you know, they’re either pro-immigration or anti-immigration. Because if you think the immigration rate is 10 percent and you want it reduced to 8 percent, you’re anti-immigration, right? But if your friend thinks it’s 1 percent and should go to 2 percent, he thinks he’s pro-immigration, even though he’s advocating a rate that’s four times lower than what you’re advocating.’ In fact, Ranney says, the real immigration rate is just 0.4 percent.”

More on An interesting number: statistics that prompt change

Previously I wrote about the notion of the economy as being made up of three sectors—public, private, and nonprofit. But recently I’ve seen a few references to “the fourth sector.” The term refers to enterprises, sometimes called social enterprises, that straddle the for-profit and nonprofit divide.

social enterprises seem to ask,
“how much is enough?”

As one organization, B Corporation describes it, “B Corporations™” are a new type of corporation that are purpose-driven and create benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.” To become an official B Corporation, which is a play on the familiar “C Corporation” structure, a company must actually change its governing documents, “to incorporate the interests of employees, community and the environment.”
More on is there a fourth sector?

Time to look at some case studies of design activism. Let’s start with a couple of recent projects dealing with the issue of migration between the US and Mexico.

Day Labor Station
The first project is a day laborer station devised by a nonprofit architecture studio in San Francisco, Public Architecture. Covered in an article by Kirstin Palm in Metropolis Magazine (June 2007), the project grew out of observations by one of the studio’s members, executive director Tom Panelli. Upon seeing day laborers on street corners waiting for builders, contractors and homeowners to seek them out, he wondered about the whole system.

Portable “Day Labor Station,” courtesy Public Architecture

More on case studies: migration

link to it over on the right side there, under the “pages” heading…

Some designers are activists, that is to say, they take action (typically within the context of a contentious issue) intended to bring about change on behalf of a wronged or excluded group. But once designers are out of the picture, have moved on to the next job, can artifacts in themselves be activists? Can buildings, appliances, tools, or items of clothing, in themselves, lobby for change or even “force” it?

can a chair act for change?

I see two main ways that people argue this case (both for and against): first on the basis of form and second on the basis of program or use (program being an architects way of describing “use”). I would like to add a third, on the basis of their “composition” although I’m not entirely sure this is the right word.

Artifacts and politics
The question of artifacts and activism is typically explored through the lens of politics and power. In this case the question is not simply whether artifacts lobby for change, but rather, what kind of power, if any, artifacts have in and of themselves.

More on Can artifacts be activists?

The Ulm Foundation in Germany is sponsoring an interesting competition called, “Designing Politics – the Politics of Design” for which the deadline is 10th May 2008 and entries can be from anywhere in the world. The call for entries says that, “Ulm has set itself the task of conducting a discourse on the social responsibility of designers to promote the democratic quality of design.” It looks as though they’ve got 50,000 euros to allocate. Applications are by online form only.

If I seem like a booster for the nonprofit sector, it’s because mainly, I am. As I explained in “activism and the economy” I think by and large the nonprofit sector raises the bar for social and environmental performance in the public and private sectors. But recently I’ve come across a few thought-provoking pieces on the nonprofit sector, reminding me that we must approach it critically. By “critical” I don’t mean by putting it down, of course, I mean approach it with an investigative attitude, rather than assuming it is a certain way (e.g. all good).

too radical for corporate-influenced philanthropy? 

The criticisms of the nonprofit sector stem from two main sources of funding, philanthropists and foundations. The aim of the nonprofit sector is to work for good causes. That work can be free of the business motives that require ever increasing profits, but nonprofits do have to raise money. They can use a range of strategies to raise money, and they can even make money (i.e. they can make profits) but the difference is they don’t distribute profits to owners, they plow profits back into their cause.

More on Criticism of Nonprofits