design activism

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

From April 16th to April 30 2008 I will be “discussing” the book online with readers on the Well’s author’s forum, known as “Inkwell”
http://www.well.com/inkwell/
The Well is the online community known “whole earth ‘lectronic link.” I’ve made a comittment to check in to the forum at least once a day during this two week period. The discussion is open to all, whether or not you are a member of the Well.

Update to part 1
In part 1 of this answer, I offered ideas for you to evolve a sustainable design job out of a conventional design job. Since I wrote that post, I’ve come across a few additional pointers on converting a conventional design job into a sustainable design job. First, a new group called the Designer’s Accord offers a set of “tips” for breaking the ice on environmental aspects of design (I’ve also written about them in my manifestos post). Their tips are primarily for introducing the issue to clients, but some of their ideas such as the “physical prompt”/show-and-tell could also work well for the budding sustainable designer in a conventional design job.

Second, I came across an article by Russell Fortmeyer in Architectural Record (november 2007) that profiles some designers who’ve become sustainability managers in architectural practices. Some of those interviewed for the piece suggest other strategies to would-be sustainable designers:

More on Q: sustainable design job - addendum part 1

This category contains my answers to a series of questions that often come up when I’m talking to groups about sustainable design and the ideas in my book, The Designers Atlas of Sustainability.

Q: I’ve recently graduated in design (architecture, industrial design, textile design, etc.) and I’m really interested in working in sustainability, but I don’t see any design jobs that really include it. Where can I find a job in sustainable design?

A: [This is part 2 of a 2-part answer.] In this second part of the answer I look at options for a job that concentrates on sustainability issues rather than the practice of design (and then evolving it into a design job) or the option of finding a design-related job in the public sector or in a consultancy that specializes in public and nonprofit client work.

Let’s look at the job that concentrates on sustainability or sustainable development. Let’s assume that through your design studies you pursued sustainability and even did a couple of specific sustainable design briefs; even better, let’s assume you used some of your history and theory classes to do additional research and further expand your knowledge of sustainability. You have substantive knowledge of the concepts underpinning sustainability and you have some visual evidence of your own original [design] thinking on the subject.

More on Q: find a sustainable design job? [part 2]

(Accords, Declarations, Calls to Arms, Codes of Practice, Polemics)

If you need evidence that designers are struggling with the questions of activism and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way the profession engages is social and environmental issues, you need look no further than a spate of recent manifestos, etc. Although some of them are discipline-specific, many are not, and they are not institutionally specific. That is, they speak to the broad population of their audience, whether across disciplines or within a discipline. Often adopting the language of politics–revolution, even– these texts urge designers to take more action for social and environmental good. Here are some examples, arranged in a timeline.

More on Manifestos, etc.

All Design is Activism
I’ve heard some people argue that if activism is simply of form of action intended to create change, then all design is activism. Randolph Hester, at UC Berkeley, makes this argument adding, “there is no such thing as passive design” [1]. And it’s true that a great deal of writing about design either records, celebrates or critiques the active nature of design that Hester calls out. A particular strand of the literature focuses on the stories of individual designers, for example product designers such as James Dyson or Philipe Starck, or architects such as Frank Gehry or Norman Foster. These stories, filled with the intentions of the designers, their sketches, models, prototypes, and ultimately, finished products and buildings, highlight just how typical “intentional action” is in almost any design process.

stories abound of “intentional action” by designers such as Gehry and Foster

More on Design - When is it Activism?

This category contains my answers to a series of questions that often come up when I’m talking to groups about sustainable design and the ideas in my book, The Designers Atlas of Sustainability.

Q: I’ve recently graduated in design (architecture, industrial design, textile design, etc.) and I’m really interested in working in sustainability, but I don’t see any design jobs that really include it. Where can I find a job in sustainable design?

A: [This is part 1 of a 2-part answer.] Unfortunately at the entry level in the private sector, there simply aren’t that many jobs that obviously and directly involve sustainable design. Even at a senior level, the number of qualified, talented and experienced people who would like to have sustainable design jobs outstrips the number of those jobs. But we need to qualify this idea by saying that there aren’t many jobs that involve sustainable design to start with. You have several options for creating sustainable design jobs and I’ll get to those in a moment. More on Q: find a sustainable design job? [part 1]

I explain how I define activism in the “about & contact” page, but here I’m illustrating how activism fits into the economy. In this post I first describe the economy and design’s role in it, then I investigate how activism manifests itself within this framework.

The Economy
First, we have to recognize that the economy is bigger than the market — it has to be. The economy is a system for allocating resources, but there are many resources that we have, such as a temperate atmosphere, old growth forests, healthy children, diverse languages or democratic freedoms, that are very difficult to price. It is difficult and arguably even inappropriate to make money off of them. These resources and their value simply can’t be captured adequately in the private sector.

And guess what. Many of the things we’re aiming for with sustainability and sustainable design are just the sorts of things that aren’t captured by the market place.

If the economy is not the market, then what else is there? I suggest we need to think about a three-sector economy, as shown below.

The market place, often called the private sector, is obviously an important tool for exchanging goods and services. It is a powerful tool and we can direct it towards sustainable design. But it operates within the public sector, which sets the rules of the civilization game. But between these two sectors of the economy, some things still fall through the cracks -cancer research, world peace, saving the pandas, solving homelessness–these sorts of causes fall to the nonprofit sector.

More on Activism and the economy

This category contains my answers to a series of questions that often come up when I’m talking to groups about sustainable design and the ideas in my book, The Designers Atlas of Sustainability.

Q: what do you think are some of the best examples of sustainable design around today?

A: I think there are a lot of interesting examples out there, some that are working well and some that perhaps failed but still offer good lessons. The purpose of the Atlas has not been to declare which examples are best, but rather to provide some framework for thinking about what makes a given example sustainable or not, on ecological, economic or cultural grounds. A design solution may hit the right cultural notes while overlooking significant ecological issues. For example, a packaging design might drastically improve accessibility for elderly or otherwise impaired users, while at the same time perform poorly in ecological terms.

by what criteria are they “sustainable”?

As I mention in another answer, sustainability is also very context specific. Something that we would see as “sustainable” for a tropical city may not look so sustainable in a nordic one, for example. This sensitivity to context is another factor that makes me hesitant to promote generalized “good examples.”

On the other hand, there are times when you just need a specific example (or many) to communicate the ideas. After all, visualizing new solutions, exploring alternative futures in three dimensions — this is the power of design. But new examples are appearing all the time and few people can track all of them. The real question here is: how do you find good examples when you need them? I tend to use a few different approaches.

More on Q: best sustainable design examples?