My daughter Monroe has 8 cavities. I know “terrible”, and the thing is, she is only seven years old. Now before you get the wrong idea, she has been to the dentist every six months for the last two years. Ok, maybe not the best dentist in the world, so we took her to the specialist. During her exam, he said something that really stayed with me. You see, Monroe has the kind of teeth that are more susceptible to cavities than most, softer I guess. So he told her, all wide eyes and rapt attention, that she would need to develop good habits to sustain her teeth if she wanted to keep them for her whole life. When I think about design lately, that idea keeps bouncing around in my head. Every year thousands of ideas are created and thousands of products are introduced. Few will sustain themselves. Of those that do, how many will live through decades or centuries? In a regular fashion the answers change but it's actually more about the integrity of the how and why, and the way, the questions get asked. We need to develop good habits about the how and why and way we develop products. Good thinking habits can sustain a designer's or a company's vision. Great ideas will sustain themselves for a long, long time......
Recently I went to a lecture by Enzo Mari, the genius Italian designer who has been around a long time. It was a terrific talk. When he was asked to name the best (American) designers of the last one hundred years he responded, Edison, Buckminster Fuller, and Eames. Going back 100 years to come up with these three. These designers were known for their problem solving expertise and thought processes. That is what has sustained their reputations and our admiration of their ideas over all this time. I thought Edison was the most interesting choice, and Mari made the point, "some of you may not think of him as a designer".
Edison once said;-
"From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce."
Edison the inventor of the light bulb and the phonograph knew that success was in the method as much as the idea. Another thing that Mari did,(mentioned earlier in this blog) a method he used, was to give the entire lecture using only a blackboard and a piece of chalk as visual aids. Drawing on the blackboard in real time to create rudimentary diagrams and flowcharts of his ideas. He never showed us any of the great objects or furniture he designed only the quality and manner of his thinking. He reminded me of another great Italian DaVinci, who as you already know, invented the contact lens and the helicopter centuries before technology made it possible to get there, based on his creative thinking. My take away from Mari's lecture is about the journey being at least as important as the destination and that's how I feel when I hear the term "sustainable design".
I've always thought of design as a verb. Sustainability on the other hand always seems to be a word loaded with political baggage, often indiscernible from the term "green design". Perhaps it has to do with the term "sustainable development" and the political divide with the Neo-liberals (not what it sounds like). Since the late 1990's activists have used the word 'Neoliberalism' for global market-liberalism ('capitalism') and for free-trade policies. Widely used in developing countries, some people use the word interchangeably with 'globalization'. The capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, has inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it 'neo' or new. Sustainable development or the idea that one can create models that provide for the reuse of materials and the reclaiming of capital often does not fit well within the idea of maximizing profits. Enter the phrase, "sustainable design". In Europe sustainable design policies have been legislated. A daunting idea for the future of a design community currently unfamiliar with sustainable practices. . Some sustainable Design lessons learned are forgotten over time and forcibly relearned by competition. Take for example the magnificently inefficient and tremendously successful introduction of super sized SUV's and all their class of automobiles, as if an oil crisis and near competitive take over of the car business never happened.
Let's face it, the idea that you can make products from the last ones or develop business models that establish reuse as a vehicle for profit is a pretty fantastic idea. It's the kind of thinking that may stick around for a while. But sustainable design in my view means many different things than sustainable development. That said, while "sustainability" is an great mantra, the lack of familiar tools, the lack of understanding and the lack of easily referenced and successful case studies, make "Sustainable" hard to get your arms around, especially with big business looking over your shoulder.
More Edison;
The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it....
The word sustainability can apply to design thinking in many ways. Influences from nature for example orbor example or biomickryBio mimicry. Both Design based philosophies for running a business and aesthetic points of view and executions are sustainable. Take for example the aesthetics of Apple's current designs and many of the products found on commercials for the mass market store Target correspond to aesthetic Bauhaus ideals established decades ago. The handcrafted nature and simplicity of currently uber-trendy dark wooden furniture sold pervasively in both elite furniture design studios and at Asian influenced mass outlets are influenced by primitive furniture designed centuries ago. Aesthetic philosophies that resonate tend to stick around for a while in design. The industrial revolution eventually led to the arts and crafts movement, which led to modernism, rationalism and other aesthetic philosophies. Each of these movements was sustainable for some time and those that have past the test, are often revisited and revived. Aesthetically, neo modernism is the order of the day, but it is also true that sustainable thinking is a core philosophy of the movement. In fact quite a lot of modernism theory is based on the use of natural materials and methods for assembly and disassembly.
The methods employed in problem solving are equal to and in some ways more important than the executions. Future design thinking that excludes sustainability as a priority is flawed. The ideas and the solutions we create won't "live on" if their invention does not include deep consideration of how they come together and apart, and live on in the future in the first place. Non sustainable ephemeral business successes will fade. Designer's in the future will "one up" current solutions if given the chance by including sustainability in their thinking.
Edison again;
"A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another"....
Monroe has learned the lesson early. Even though I am beside myself about the 8 cavities, I am grateful for the attention and urgency she is paying to her teeth. I have this idea that her thinking about sustaining her non-renewable resource, is going to carry over in her thinking about the next big issue. In fact, it makes me feel sometimes like something similarly dramatic should happen to the design profession. Perhaps we would be paying more attention and we would be developing better habits. And just maybe, we wouldn't forget lessons learned the hard way so easily.
Draft for the next INNOVATION journal editorial.