Patience is a Virtue Design in Ecology and Sustainability. Danielle Leigh BA Design Year 1
Manifesto In the 21st century, the modern man is all about speed. We need things now and need quick fixes which we can see working. From an economic viewpoint, this is a fantastic way to create profit, which is why the industrial revolution worked so well. The quicker you can produce a product, the quicker you can sell it and develop into a bigger company. But what does that do to the product? If things are produced quickly and obtained easily, is it valuable? Compared to the same product which is handmade, it’s value grows because you have to wait longer for it and because of the specialised skills required to craft it. You could argue that the problem with hand made objects is that you have more risk of human error, which is true as humans are not perfect and are nowhere near as accurate as machines. However we can adapt and machines cannot. When they are creating products on an assembly line, a machine cannot adapt to a mistake or an error, and so the product suffers. Give the same mistake or error to a human craftsman and they could adapt it to work or create something completely new. In the real world these ideals take too long and are too costly. The profit gained from the mechanical crafting outweighs the adaptability and creativity of the human craftsman. The problem with our fast paced way of living is that we rarely look at the bigger picture. We want quick fixes we can see working, or that makes us feel that they are working. The problem we have got ourselves into has been caused by our lack of forward thinking. Native americans made major decisions only after considering the implications for nearly two centuries on their future generations.1 If we had used the same kind of thinking, we wouldn’t be in the ecological mess we are in today. There was a time when we used to be forward thinking. Before the industrial revolution, the majority of people were in agriculture and needed to plan many years in advanced to reap successful crops and survive. This forward thinking had sustained us for thousands of years, allowing for adaption and devel-
opment while having barely a fraction of the environmental impact we have today. As the industrial revolution came along, we could get things more quickly and so didn’t need to think that far ahead. This is the mistake we are paying for today. We didn’t think ahead when we started using fossil fuels, they were new and had so much potential. However we didn’t know the impact they would have on the environment or how finite these new resources were. Granted we didn’t have the scientific or the technological advances which we have today. We have now become so reliant on these limited resources that in the society we live in today, the energy and amount of materials we consume means that we can’t stop using them. We need to use inspiration from the natural systems which have evolved and sustained themselves for millennia. The systems which we have called primitive and primal are the most sophisticated systems for sustainability on this planet. And they work. The man made systems we have been following for years have not helped us. We have been trying to perfect a system which has been around us for years. The natural world works on three types of cycles based on time and size: the slow and large cycle, the medium cycle and the small but fast cycle. The large cycle happens slowly and rarely changes; it acts as a foundation for the system. The small cycle happens very fast, adapting to changes while the large cycle can maintain a constant. The medium cycle is where the adaptions of the small cycle moves into the large cycle and becomes more constant. This system provides resilience.2 In our own society, we have the same cycles, but our large cycle’s foundation isn’t built to last, as our use of fossil fuels have been engrained into it. We need to change this. Our main prob-
lem is that the fossil fuels we are using are running out. The way we live now, relying on these limited resources, means that this is a big problem. And this is even before we start thinking about the economical effects these fuels have on the environment. We need a lot of energy and we don’t have the means to produce this energy indefinitely. We also need a more permanent change, something that is going to last so we don’t make the same mistakes we made during the industrial revolution. Despite the technological advances and the hundreds of experts we have worrying about these problems, the main causes for them are us. The everyday ordinary person makes up the majority of the human population. We are both the main cause of our problems and we have the greatest abilty to make changes in our environment. The experts and world leaders are still just individuals and can not make changes on their own. We fast-paced modern individuals are a product of our own destruction. How can we change this? As individuals, our problem is that we don’t think that far ahead and in the society we live in today we have never needed to be . Compared with the problems we face today, we only think in the short term: only a few years into the future. The ecological and societal problems we face have developed over decades and will need solutions which will last hundreds of years into the future, or ideally become permanent. With the way we think now, we may not be capable of thinking of a solution which will meet these standards. Here, we need to take inspiration from nature. We need to start with a small change which can be engrained into the foundations of our thinking. By using the same cycles of nature we can implement these changes into the core of society. But it has to be adaptable. We need to change the way we think. We need to stop thinking fast and demanding things now, so that we can consider how our decisions impact on the future. We need to relearn patience. It was our lack of patience which stopped us looking forward into the future. It was our patience which helped us survive and develop into the creatures we are today.
Handbook Government. The government and law system is where our most important and most influential decisions are made. We need to have policies and acts which look into the effects these decisions cause decades or hundreds of years into the future, rather than just a few such as 5 or 10. The way we work now, we could make a decision and look into its effects on society and the environment, and find that in 5-10 years time it would have generally good results. However the same decision could have terrible effects after fifty or a hundred years, which is why we need to look that far ahead.
Design. “...Imagine that you had 40 years to think
about design, 40 years to think about what your ideal practice is, not what you get by with. And so the intelligence of the design is so much sweeter than it was at the beginning...� - Patch Adams, M.D., Transform 2010 Symposium.3 Good design takes time. It takes time to think of all the variables, all the possibilities and to work out all the kinks. By taking time in developing your ideas, you can think about how your design fits into society, both present and in the future, and how it will effect the environment when its use is over. You can also think about the wider implications of your design, such as who makes your design and where the materials come from, and how this has an impact on the world. This doesn’t just work with physical products; it can also benefit other designs, such as systems and interventions. Good design can be adapted.
Education To engrain the ideals of patience and forward thinking into society, we need to teach it to those who will have control in the future: the younger generations. This generation needs to start the ball rolling. As our generation is too fixated on the fast-paced way of thinking which we have been brought up with. It may be too late to change our way of thinking, so we must pass that privilege onto those who can change the future and hope that they will continue to teach this to their future generations and learn from our past mistakes.
Quotes 1
Thorpe, A (2007), The Designer’s Atlas
of Sustainability: Charting the Conceptual Landscape through Economy, Ecology, and Culture, United States: Island Press (p. 163) 2
Thorpe, A (2007), The Designer’s Atlas
of Sustainability: Charting the Conceptual Landscape through Economy, Ecology, and Culture, United States: Island Press (p. 50) http://youtu.be/CdCrPBqQALc?t=9m9s Patch Adams, M.D., Transform 2010 Symposium. (9:09-10:15 mins) 3
Bibliography Books Benyus, J (1997), Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, New York: Quill William Morrow. Fuad-Luke, A (2002), The Eco-Design Handbook: A Complete Sourcebook for the Home and Office, London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Hill, J (2011), The Secret Life of Stuff: A Manual for a New Material World, London: Vintage Originals. Mau, B and the Institute without Boundaries (2004), Massive Change, London: Phaidon Press Limited. McDonough, W and Braungart, M (2002), Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, New York: North Point Press. Papanek, V (2000), Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Thackara, J (2005), In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, London: The MIT Press. Thorpe, A (2007), The Designer’s Atlas of Sus-
tainability: Charting the Conceptual Landscape through Economy, Ecology, and Culture, United States: Island Press. Walker, S (2007), Sustainable by Design: Exploration in Theory and Practice, London: Earthscan. Yeang, K and Spector, A (edited by) (2011), Green Design: From Theory to Practice, London: Black Dog Publishing Limited.
Articles Abraham, C (2 February 2013). Interview with Dekila Chungyalpa: Do unto the planet, New Scientist, Issue 2902, p. 26-27. Aldhous, P (2 February 2013). Yes, Obama can deliver on climate, New Scientist, Issue 2902, p. 10-11. Grossman, L (2 February 2013). Earth loses its status as a Goldilocks world, New Scientist, Issue 2902, p. 12 MacKenzie, D and Le Page, M (11 December 2010) Dawn of the plantimals, New Scientist, Issue 2790, p. 33-35 Pearce, F (2 February 2013). Rainforest, bringer of the world’s winds, New Scientist, Issue 2902, p. 12
Videos http://youtu.be/CdCrPBqQALc?t=9m9s Patch Adams, M.D., Transform 2010 Symposium. (9:09-10:15 mins) http://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_ on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html William McDonough: Cradle to Cradle Design, TED Talks (Febrauary 2005) http://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_ of_urban_renewal.html Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto, TED Talk (Febuary 2006)
http://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_mohr_ builds_green.html Catherine Mohr builds green, TED Talk (Febuary 2010) http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html Mike Biddle: We can recycle plastic, TED Talk (July 2011) http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html Eben Bayer: Are Mushrooms the new plastic? TED Talk (July 2010)
Image Referance Title page: http://www.elitewealthmastery.com/ about/attachment/green-shoot/ Page 3: Steelworks at Barrow-in-Furness, 1877, http://victoria.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/browseTimeline. php?group=&year1=&year2= Page 4: Panarchy revolt remember colour.gif http://www. sustainablescale.org/ConceptualFramework/UnderstandingScale/MeasuringScale/Panarchy.aspx Page 8: Own image.