360 Degrees acted as a dissemination event for DEEDS and forum for sharing experiences and ideas in sustainable design teaching as well as forecasting future developments in the field.
Alastair Fuad-Luke, former project manager of DEEDS, summarised the principles that underpin DEEDS's educational agenda on the first day of talks at the 100% Sustainable stand in Earl's Court, London, by “a commitment to ethical design approaches, the adoption of sophisticated design tools and cutting edge knowledge, co-creative and interdisciplinary practice, design leadership, and the demonstration of 'value-addedness' through sustainable design.” Also speaking on Friday were Rob Holdway (Giraffe Innovations), Guy Robinson (Sprout Design), and Susannah Hagan (University of East London), all of whom emphasised the importance and, perhaps surprisingly, relatively straightforward nature of affecting change through design in co-operation with industry and business. William Wong (Clore Leadership Programme) chaired the concluding panel discussion.
On the second day of the conference, at the University of Brighton, keynote speaker Anne-Marie Willis (Team D/E/S, Queensland, AU) changed the tone of the debate by asking for a radical re-evaluation of the role of design. She rejects the widespread "added-on sustainability" on the grounds that this perpetuates a fundamentally unsustainable, growth-based system. Instead she asks for designers to "see the unsustainable" before designing so-called sustainable products and buildings; to consider "the agency of things" and the way in which design itself designs the world; and to engage in "redirective practice" away from object-creation and towards service-provision. She defines such practice as "sustainment" or "incremental action taken now towards enhancing society’s ability to sustain itself and that with which it interacts and upon which it depends."
The day's second keynote speaker, Jonathan Crinion, echoed the need for design to fundamentally rethink its own ethical premises and practical remit. Crinion, who has given up a successful career in furniture design in favour of developing a new educational model based on the concept of Holistic Design Ecology, insists that designers must beware of the psychological fallacy inherent in the time lag between "normality" now and the likely consequences of resource depletion and climate change later. For Crinion, the scope for transforming the design industry gradually and from within is limited if not altogether illusory. Instead he advocates the education of a new generation of designers who approach the question of sustainability in profoundly different ways.
Also on Saturday, educational developments 'on the ground' were discussed. Launching DEEDS's pilot scheme for the Podscape, a web-based T&L resource, contributors presented a diverse range of Pods, or educational case-studies. This included examples of successful cross-overs between academia and practice, such as Adam de Eyto's participant-designed CPD module for Sustainable Design Innovation at IT Carlow, Ireland, or Toni Hick's UoB students' involvement with the Trading for Development project. Jody Boehnert from the ecological literacy initiative Ecolabs, Eren Butler (London College of Communication), and Clare Melhuish (Queen Mary University London) presented new pedagogical initiatives and resources. Jon Goodbun (WAG-architecture) and Gaia Scagnetti (Politecnico di Milan) talked about community projects based on Ezio Manzini's brand of sustainability thinking. Paul Denison (Teesside University), DEEDS member Karolina Tylka (Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan), and Anne Chick (Kingston University) reported on progress in sustainable design education in their respective institutions, amongst other contributions.
DEEDS will upload project results, including pods and video material, on its site (www.deedsproject.org) in the coming weeks. In the meantime Tom Ainsworth is exploring options for developing the Podscape further, potentially in co-operation with Marco Quaggiotto (Politecnico di Milan), while Karin Jaschke, together with Paul Denison and Tara Andrews (University of Western Sydney), has been invited to co-edit an issue of Design Philosophy Papers on the role of sustainability thinking in design historiography.
For more details of the DEEDS project, click
here. www.deedsproject.org
