Design for Sustainability

A Multi-level Framework from Products to Socio-technical Systems

Fabrizio Ceschin, İdil Gaziulusoy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429851957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design generale

This book discusses the most significant ways in which design has been applied to sustainability challenges using an evolutionary perspective. It puts forward an innovation framework that is capable of coherently integrating multiple design for sustainability (DfS) approaches developed so far.

It is now widely understood that design can and must play a crucial role in the societal transformations towards sustainability. Design can in fact act as a catalyst to trigger and support innovation, and can help to shape the world at different levels: from materials to products, product–service systems, social organisations and socio-technical systems. This book offers a unique perspective on how DfS has evolved in the past decades across these innovation levels, and provides insights on its promising and necessary future development directions.

For design scholars, this book will trigger and feed the academic debate on the evolution of DfS and its next research frontiers. For design educators, the book can be used as a supporting tool to design courses and programmes on DfS. For bachelor's and master's level design, engineering and management students, the book can be a general resource to provide an understanding of the historical evolution of DfS. For design practitioners and businesses, the book offers a rich set of practical examples, design methods and tools to apply the various DfS approaches in practice, and an innovation framework which can be used as a tool to support change in organisations that aim to integrate DfS in their strategy and processes.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429456510, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1Addressing sustainability by design

1.1 The sustainability challenge

We are going through very challenging times as a human society. The emission reduction targets that must be met in order to reduce the risk of severe climate change are still not being met and the window for limiting the average global temperature rise to between 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels is closing (Raftery, Zimmer, Frierson, Startz, & Liu, 2017, UNEP, 2017). In a recent special report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) discussed the impacts of a global average temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels on natural and human systems (IPCC, 2018). According to the report, human activities have already caused a temperature rise approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels and the increase is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if the trend continues at the current rate. The report also compared a rise of 1.5°C with a rise of 2°C. Although the risks are projected to increase with a rise of 1.5°C, they will increase even more if warming is not limited further; a 2°C temperature rise implies a very substantial increase in risk for some impact areas. One to three decades from today are left for significant climate action to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C; this is considered urgent. Although addressing climate change is quite often considered a technical and behavioural challenge (i.e. it is considered to fall into the ‘practical’ sphere of transformation), there is a need for the transformation of the systems and structures that facilitate or constrain the practical responses to climate change (i.e. the ‘political’ sphere of transformation) (O’Brien, 2018). There is also a need for the transformation of the beliefs, values, worldviews and paradigms that influence how people perceive, define or constitute systems and structures, and a need for the transformation of their behaviours and practices (i.e. the ‘personal’ sphere of transformation) (O’Brien, 2018).

Although arguably the most urgent sustainability challenge, climate change is only one of the several sustainability challenges we are facing. The ‘Planetary Boundaries’ framework (Steffen et al., 2015) sets out precautionary boundaries – a safe operating space – for nine critical processes of human-driven environmental change. According to this framework, two boundaries have currently been severely breached (biosphere integrity and biochemical flows), posing a high risk; two have been breached (climate change and land-system change), posing an increasing risk; and two are yet to be quantified (novel entities and atmospheric aerosol loading). Only three of the nine boundaries have currently not been breached (freshwater use, ocean acidification and stratospheric ozone depletion). Beyond these nine boundaries, we all face the possibility of abrupt, large-scale changes in Earth system functioning and significant risks to societies and economies worldwide. Raworth (2012) developed the concept of social foundations to complement the Planetary Boundaries framework and argued for a ‘safe and just operating space’ which lies between the environmental ceiling and social foundations. The social foundations include food security, water and sanitation, health care, education, energy, gender equality, social equity, voice, jobs and resilience. She demonstrated through illustrative indicators that humanity is currently failing to provide these social foundations.

If we look at the sustainability challenge from a material point of view, we might be able to understand the above-listed overarching challenges from the perspective of production–consumption systems. According to the estimates of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, 2010), in 2007 the size of the global ecological footprint was double what it had been in 1966, and if the trend continues, this means that in 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb the waste generated and keep up with natural resource consumption. According to the United Nations (UN, 2016), by 2050 we would need three Earths to sustain our current lifestyles. Based on the Factor 10 benchmark of Schmidt-Bleek (1993), who argued for the need to reduce material consumption by a factor of ten to achieve sustainability, Lettenmeier (2018) developed the lifestyle material approach. Using this approach, he calculated that in Finland, for example, households would need to reduce their lifestyle footprint to eight tonnes (an 80% reduction) by 2050. Although reducing resource use is a key requirement in order to achieve sustainability, there is another dimension that needs to be considered and which adds to the complexity of the sustainability challenge. This dimension is resource distribution; 20% of the world’s richest countries consume 80% of the resources, with similar distribution inequality also within these rich countries. The inequality of resource distribution and significant discrepancies of resource-use levels between the rich and the poor across and within countries relate to the ethics of responsibility, sustainability politics and environmental justice.

In order to address the sustainability challenge and associated complexities, a profound, radical transformation of our development model is necessary. As underlined by Manzini (1999), there are not only production processes and artefacts (products and services, infrastructure and all the various forms of anthropological settlements) under discussion but also patterns of consumption and access to goods and services. In fact, over the next few decades we must enable ourselves to move from a society wherein well-being and economic health are measured in terms of growth to a society where we are able to live better, consuming far less (Manzini & Vezzoli, 1998). In other words, it is required that we change the way in which needs are fulfilled and develop consumption patterns and lifestyles based on the consumption of far fewer resources. It is increasingly acknowledged that we have to urgently move towards socio-technical systems that are capable of operating within the planet’s limits while ensuring that this move follows pathways that are ethical and just.

1.2 Responses from design

1.2.1 The beginnings

The earliest concerns about resource limits and the impact of our material production on the environment are often traced back to Buckminster Fuller’s teachings and work (Fuller, 1969). Fuller coined the concept of ‘Spaceship Earth’, drawing attention to the physically bounded limits of our planet. A few years before this, Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens (1972) published the results of their mathematical systems model for those limits. Fuller also argued that unless humans take responsibility to care for and maintain the Earth, the Earth’s functions will be compromised or even collapse. While Fuller is not the first to be concerned about the pressures put on the environment by human society (scholarly concern can be traced back as far as Alexander von Humboldt’s writings from the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century; Wulf, 2015), he was the first to frame these concerns in an engineering and design context. Madge (1993) traced the connections between design and ecology back to the 1960s and 1970s, to the first great wave of the environmental movement. She remarked that terminological changes, which reflect changes in values and priorities, can disguise continuities. Along with this remark, she identified catchphrases of the 1970s, such as ‘design for need’ and ‘alternative design’, as precursors of the green design and ecodesign of the 1980s.

Madge (1993) also referred to several resources from the era of this first wave of environmentalism as related to design; however, the seminal work introducing environmental considerations into the world of designers is considered to be Victor Papanek’s book Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (Papanek, 1985). The first edition of this book was published in Sweden in 1970 and in the USA in 1971, after being rejected by 12 publishers (Madge, 1993). In this book, Papanek provided an in-depth critique of the design profession, pointing out its role in encouraging consumption and therefore contributing to ecological and social degradation. His work reflected a sophisticated response, focusing not only on improving the outputs of design activity but also on promoting the transformation of the design profession.

The 1980s saw a series of interventions in the form of books, conferences, exhibitions and lobbying that aimed to bring the environmental agenda to the attention of designers, industrialists and the general public (Madge, 1993). The publication of the book Green Design by the Design Council in the UK (Burall, 1991) could perhaps be seen as the beginning of a wider and more systematic interest in design with regard to sustainability. Nevertheless, the ‘pickup’ has been slow; sustainability has only become a central topic in design very recently.

1.2.2 From green design to design for sustainability transitions

The initial responses in design in the early 1990s focused on a redesign approach, adopted to reduce environmental impacts and increase the efficiency of individual products (green design). This was accompanied in the second half of the 1990s by a focus on the entire life cycle of a product (ecodesign). Although considered as significant initial steps, green design and ecodesign had a sole focus on environmental impacts, and the early implementations failed to replace high-impact products and instead created a new market for more environmentally friendly products. While ecodesign offered a range of design strategies with which to extend product lifespans, psychological obsolescence (which is linked to the disposal of products that are still functioning) was identified as a challenge in reducing consumption. In order to address this, emotionally durable design strategies were developed, starting from the second half of the 2000s. Emotionally durable design aims to enhance the emotional tie between the user and the product in order to delay or avoid product replacement. Around the same time, another approach that diverged from the technical focus of reducing impact stemmed from the realisation that human behaviour also had a role in the environmental impacts of products, particularly of those products that consume materials or energy during their use. Design for sustainable behaviour aims to address use-related impacts by implementing strategies that target influencing user behaviour so that it tends towards pro-environmental modes. While some designers focused on addressing the shortcomings of product-focused technical interventions with the aim of reducing environmental impacts through positioning the user in the picture as an important element in these endeavours, interest has also risen in adopting nature as a model for achieving sustainability through design. The two prominent approaches promoting the latter are biomimicry and cradle-to-cradle, developed respectively from around the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Although similar in their approach of seeing waste as a nutrient, the former puts emphasis on closing the loops in production while the latter studies the materials and processes of nature as an inspiration for design. On the other hand, around the same time, sustainable product–service systems targeted functional innovation in order to address the limitations and rebound effects associated with product-centred approaches, along with recognising that there is a need for radical changes in the production–consumption system. The focus on sustainable product–service systems represents a shift from product design thinking to system design thinking, as products, services and networks of actors need to be designed simultaneously, giving way to new organisational models through which needs are met. All of these approaches are predominantly focused on addressing sustainability issues in the Global North. However, while one end of sustainability requires addressing the overconsumption of resources in the Global North, the other end requires the reduction of poverty in the Global South. Design for the base of the pyramid initially focused on the Global South as a new market for selling products and services developed by companies of the Global North. This gained criticism as such a strategy did not place poverty reduction at its centre and had an exploitative attitude. The second generation of the base-of-the-pyramid interventions, on the other hand, focused on the base of the pyramid as a business partner to be empowered, enabled and involved in the process of business co-creation. Design for the base of the pyramid gradually expanded the scope of intervention range from products to business models and complex socio-ethical aspects. While business interest has been the main driver in all of these approaches, the recognition that some social needs are not met by established practices gave rise to design for social innovation around the second half of the 2000s. In design for social innovation, the main role of design shifted from designing for a target group to designing with communities to assist them in meeting their own needs. In design for social innovation, design becomes an activity situated in the systemic context of communities. On the other hand, systemic design put emphasis on systems thinking in the creation of complex industrial systems. It combines elements of cradle-to-cradle design and biomimicry with industrial ecology in order to understand and improve industrial systems by focusing on material and energy flows and their impacts on the environment. Currently, the cutting edge of the DfS field is marked by an emerging research and practice area, namely DfS transitions or, in short, transition design. DfS transitions focuses on the transformation of socio-technical systems through technological, social, organisational and institutional innovations. In this regard, it can be understood as an overarching approach which embodies the other approaches discussed in this book, including design for product–service systems and design for social innovation. Aligned with the increasing emphasis on cities as being among the key intervention contexts for sustainability transformations, DfS transitions expanded its focus from businesses and production–consumption systems to cities, which are essentially systems of socio-technical systems.

References

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Fuller, R. B. (1969). Operating manual for Spaceship Earth. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

IPCC. (2018). Summary for Policymakers. In V. Masson-Delmotte et al. (Eds.), Global warming of 1.5°C: An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Geneva, Switzerland: World Meteorological Organization.

Lettenmeier, M. (2018). A sustainable level of material footprint — benchmark for designing one-planet lifestyles. Aalto, Finland: Aalto University.

Madge, P. (1993). Design, ecology, technology: A historiographical review. Journal of Design History, 6(3), 149–166.

Manzini, E. (1999). Sustainable solutions 2020 – systems. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference Towards Sustainable Product Design, Brussels, Belgium, 12–13 July.

Manzini, E., and Vezzoli, C. (1998) Lo sviluppo di prodotti sostenibili. I requisiti ambientali dei prodotti industriali. Rimini, Italy: Maggioli Editore.

Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The Limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. New York: Universe Books.

O’Brien, K. (2018). Is the 1.5°C target possible? Exploring the three spheres of transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 31, 153–160. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2018.04.010

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Raftery, A. E., Zimmer, A., Frierson, D. M....