Since November 2006 the University of Brighton has been participating in a European Union funded project on design education in sustainability, DEEDS. The aim of this project is to research, develop and implement new educational models and tools for embedding sustainability within the design curricula. As the project is run in conjunction with European partners (including the ICIS Center, Denmark, and the Academy of Fine Arts Poznan, Poland) it will generate not only new internal cooperation but also new international relationships. It is hoped that over a two-year period the accumulation of research and application of pedagogic knowledge in this area will enhance existing expertise and enable the Faculty of Arts & Architecture to become a place of excellence and leader in sustainable design education.
In March
Karin Jaschke and
Katherine Ladd (School of Architecture & Design) conducted some preliminary research into the existing levels of interest in adopting sustainability principles amongst students and staff in the School, the first results of which have shown a definite inclination towards this. It also became evident, even from preliminary enquiry, that there are substantial barriers against the dynamic and full-blown incorporation of sustainable thinking into design teaching, including limited resources, a lack of training opportunities, and, not least, a certain amount of cultural and institutional inertia. At the same time, those tutors interested in sustainability have created impressive pockets of sustainability education in all four programmes in the School, not quite by stealth, but very much as bottom-up efforts, amongst them
Jonathan Chapman’s and
Nick Gant’s 3-D projects,
Toni Hicks’ studio work with community-produced knitwear, the Productive Urban Landscapes research of
André Viljoen and
Katrin Bohn, which informs their third year architecture studio, and Stefano Santilli’s work in Interior Architecture.
Initial research and discussion have also highlighted some fundamental issues regarding sustainability education and have led Karin and Katherine to formulate a number of provisional positions with regard to sustainability education in design. They can be identified as three clear areas of debate:
First, while it is important to be clear about the meaning of ‘sustainability’; definitions of the term have a tendency to be either too narrow, partisan, or all-encompassing and generalised. To be productive at all, definitions of ‘sustainability’ would need to be specific to their context as well as competitive, or evolving. It emerged from discussions within the project and with staff that sustainability may usefully be framed as open-ended enquiry and process, and that it may therefore be more helpful to seek to set out the principles and criteria that ought to govern such processes than to aim at text-book definitions.
Second, it follows from this that sustainability education involves a value-driven approach to teaching. The view expressed by virtually all interviewed tutors that sustainability is an ethical as much as a practical-technical challenge to designers concurs with this. This is not to be confused with prescriptive or doctrinaire teaching. On the contrary, it means enabling students to define the criteria and values against which their design work is developed and judged by themselves and to do this within a comprehensive, holistic framework. It involves a stakeholder-orientated approach and cultural and material lifecycle considerations.
Third, if sustainability is a value-driven process of enquiry, this is also what potentially makes it a valuable pedagogic tool, or even paradigm, for design education, beyond the social and environmental imperatives that drive its implementation. The recognition that the creative potential of sustainable design education may far outweigh the restrictive aspects associated with sustainability seems to be at the heart of successful sustainability education.
Also in March, Karin and Katherine went to Poznan to meet with the European project partners and were presented with an inspiring example of sustainable teaching practice as principled enquiry. As part of a tour of the Academy of Fine Arts they visited Professor Wojciech Hora’s Department of Bionics, which is part of the Interior Architecture and Design Faculty but also draws students from across the Academy, as part of the Academy’s unique cross-disciplinary, modular curriculum structure. Bionics is a design educational method that is broadly concerned with using natural systems as a springboard for design. Hora’s students learn about technologies and new applications of sustainable materials, aspects of ergonomics, and psychology. They then have to develop their own investigative design process in a sequence of analytic and synthetic works. The student work on display comprised of a series of material and technical exercises that demonstrated an exceptional understanding of nature as a source of inspiration for design solutions. The sophistication of some of the pieces was impressive, exploring natural geometry, scale, movement, and materials. According to Hora, the Bionics programme has been developed over the last 25 years and is now delivered to every student at the Academy through four independent professorial studios. An interesting detail of design education in Poznan was that all professors have their own separate spaces, microcosms that are office, studio, gallery, workshop, and seminar room in one and make for an intimate and stimulating teaching environment.
Back in Brighton, before the end of the academic year, a series of meetings and focus groups will complete the initial research phase of the project and provide a forum for the discussion of current teaching practices amongst staff and students as well as an exploration and expansion of the fundamental issues outlined above. In September DEEDS will invite lecturers from the four programmes to take part in a masterclass in sustainable design education delivered by Schumacher College President and DEEDS initiator Karen Blincoe. This will take the form of an all expenses paid, four-day residential event at Schumacher College in Devon (www.schumachercollege.org.uk), with guests who are influential thinkers, teachers and practitioners. The DEEDS website (www.deedsproject.org) will be going live shortly. Lecturers who would like to join the discussion should contact Katherine and Karin at: k.ladd@brighton.ac.uk or k.jaschke@brighton.ac.uk.
