360 Degrees

Conference announcement and call for Pods

360o – Charting New Territory in Sustainable Design Education.

A conference aimed at international design and architecture educators engaged in sustainable design education, practitioners interested in higher education and continuing professional development (CPD) in sustainable design, and students of design.

360o was convened by DEEDS (Design Education for Sustainability), an international, multi-partner, EU-funded project that aims to integrate sustainability into mainstream design education and practice. It was organised and hosted by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Brighton.

As part of DEEDS’ ongoing work, 360o aimed to track a range of approaches, experiments and results in sustainable design teaching across Europe and beyond, by bringing together design educators and practitioners who are moving to the forefront of the current radical rethinking of production and consumption patterns from the standpoint of sustainability – whether defined as systematic, green, community-oriented, ethical, environmental, or simply 'better' design. The event asked: where does design education stand in relation to sustainability?

• Can design education be a positive change agent, or does it merely follow practice?
• Does it have the power and means to make the tables turn, in radical, inspirational and efficacious ways?
• What are the mindsets, methods and materials that will give rise to a new culture in design education and practice?
• What are the drivers and gains of breaking new ground in sustainable design education?

360o offered three days of exciting events and opportunities to share and exchange ideas, knowledge and experiences in sustainable design education and practice:

19 September: 360o @ 100% Design / 100% Sustainable?, Earls Court, London, UK
Workshops, presentations and exhibition at the ‘100% Sustainable?’ stand at 100% Design

20 September: 360o @ University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
A one-day academic conference in Brighton, UK

21 September: 360o @ Large
Tour of local eco-architecture sites around Brighton, UK

Speakers included:

• Anne-Marie Willis, design educator from Sydney, Australia, who was a Founder-Director of the EcoDesign Foundation and now works with Tony Fry at Team D / E / S
• Alastair Fuad-Luke, author of the Eco-Design Handbook (Thames & Hudson)
• Karen Blincoe, Director, Schumacher College, Devon
• William Wong, Clore Leadership Programme Fellow, Royal Society of Arts & Manufacture (RSA)
• Susannah Hagan, author, Taking Shape: A New Contract Between Architecture and Nature (Architectural Press) and Head of the MA Architecture: Sustainability+Design at University of East London (UEL)
• Jonathan Crinion, Jonathan Crinion Associates
• Jonathan Chapman, co-director of the Inheritable Futures Laboratory, If:Lab
• Anne Chick, author and Director of the Sustainable Design Research Centre, Kingston University
• Rob Holdway, Director, Giraffe Innovation, currently working with L’Oreal, Sainsbury's and British Airways

Tour destinations included: Woodland Enterprise Centre, Flimwell, East Sussex; the Weald and Downland Museum, West Sussex; and the Earthship, Brighton

Call for Pods

As part of the conference, we called on educators and practitioners to contribute to the ‘Podscape’, a web-based platform to share Teaching & Learning resources (‘pods’) for sustainable design, piloted by DEEDS. Submitted Pods were presented, displayed and discussed at the conference and have become part of the emerging body of knowledge and resources in sustainable design education.

Pods may address one or more of the following themes:

• pedagogic research, theories, approaches and experiments in sustainable design education
• practical implementation of sustainability design education, for example: project work, case studies, best practice and partnership with industry
• political, institutional and philosophical aspects of sustainable design education
• Pod abstracts: 300 word descriptions of a Pod, or completed Pod form