deisgn for tomorrow
Container living
Sustainability Manifesto
Print Responsibilities
Teaching Sustainability
Table of Contents
AIGA on sustainability Sustainability manifesto Featured Artist Featured designer Bringing schools toward sustainability
A-Z critical space Container living Print design and environmental responsibility Marketing sustainability to industrial designers
A ndrea
Critical Space
As a child, Andrea Zittel cut out the crotch of her tights so she could wear them as a top, making a perfect reciprocity with those she wore on her legs. Given this precocity of invention, it seems only natural that she would grow up to be a painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, carpenter, seamstress, fashion designer, merchandiser, nutritionist and social engineer who keeps redesigning her own and other people’s lives in a Utopian XLVYWX XS[EVH QSVI JYPÁPPMRK YWI of time, space and place. Her one-woman lifestyle company, A-Z Administrative
Services, has created personal uniforms to alleviate the daily angst of “What should I wear?”; carpeting that can be used as furniture; dehydrated food for eating dry or cooked; elegant chamber pots; small habitats that can be built without permits and easily transported; and “escape vehicles” for inside the home that help the user tune out the external world.Not to be scanted is her “body processing unit,” which boldly puts kitchen and bathroom together in one top-to-bottom installation that packs into a carrying case. “The intake functions are at the top, the outtake functions are at the
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bottom,” Ms. Zittel, no genteel Martha Stewart, has explained. A list she has compiled of “things I know for sure” includes the sage observation “Sometimes if you can’t change a situation, you just have to change the way you think about the situation.” And a tip to obsessive housewives: “Surfaces that are ‘easy to clean’ also show dirt more. In reality, a surface XLEX GEQSYÂEKIW HMVX MW QYGL more practical than one that is easy to clean.” That she puts her money where her mouth is, so to speak, is evident in the ingenuities in
“Andrea Zittel: Critical Space,” a show of more than 75 of her habitats, installations, models, drawings and other objects from 1991 to 2005, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The show was organized by Trevor Smith, curator of the New Museum, and Paola Morsiani, curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Another Zittel exhibition, of her individually customized mobile units, “Andrea Zittel: Small Liberties,” opens on Thursday at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria.A native Californian who now lives and works partly in Los Angeles and partly in
the Mojave desert town Joshua Tree, Ms. Zittel is heir to a long list of 20th-century tweakers of the human environment. They range from Bauhauslers like the German-born weaver Anni Albers and the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky — whose prefab “Frankfurt kitchen” was built into 10,000 working-class apartments in 1927 — to Americans like Elizabeth Hawes (“Fashion Is Spinach”), Buckminster Fuller and the furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames.
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mong Ms. Zittel’s earliest attempts at controlling space to make life easier is the “A-Z Management and Maintenance Unit” (1992), a three-dimensional setup that maximized the use of her cramped Brooklyn studio; and “A-Z Carpet Furniture,” partly tongue-in-cheek [EPP XS ÂSSV GSZIVMRKW QEVOIH off by rectilinear arrangements that have a Constructivist look. One has a panel that serves as a “drop-leaf dining table,” on which you can serve meals if ]SY HSR¸X QMRH IEXMRK EX ÂSSV level. With a footprint of a mere 60 square feet, Model 003, the management and maintenance unit shown here, is built in a steel frame that can be folded up for moving. It contains a restaurantstyle dining booth, a plastic sink, a stovetop, a closet, a cot, a stool and some work space, and like most A-Z productions, can be customized to a buyer’s
taste and even moved as guest quarters into a host’s home. The use of the square steel grid and simple materials has been carried forward into her later work. The unit was partly inspired by the trials of living, after Ms. Zittel’s graduate studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, with a dog in a 200-squarefoot storefront in Brooklyn. At the time, she was working in an East Village art gallery and, never one to waste a minute, also breeding chickens experiQIRXEPP] ERH Á\MRK HMWGEVHIH objects found on the street. (Typically, she categorized the latter as “Repair Work.”) Her “A-Z Personal Uniforms” project came in response to another need. At the gallery, she knew she had to meet a more stylish standard of dress, but felt stymied by the time-andmoney complexities of throwing XSKIXLIV ER SYXÁX IZIV] HE] % YRMJSVQ WLI ÁKYVIH [SYPH HS the trick. And so she designed a series of seasonal garments, ranging from modest jumpers to silk-adorned tulle dresses, that could be worn for months at a time. (In 1993, pants entered the
repertory.)As the idea advanced, her clothes-making progressed from using simple rectangles of fabric, Constructivist -style, to crocheting, then hand-knotting ]EVR XLIR ÁREPP] LERH JIPXMRK raw wool. Since 2002, A-Z Personal Uniforms have been made of wool felt with no seams, sometimes taking abstract or organic shapes that can be adjusted with a safety pin. More than 45 variations exist today, and many are in the show, ranging from utilitarian to smart and sexy to the coolly outré, like the sleeveless white Fiber Form felted dress No. 7, which is as hole-y as Swiss cheese, presumably to let in air. Today Ms. Zittel carries out most of her operations at A-Z West, as she calls her desert headquarters, a 25-acre compound where the production, use and presentation of her work are brought together in a single site Here she’s created her line of A-Z Raugh (pronounced raw) furniture, based on the idea of what she calls “natural order,” giving the human tendency toward entropy more play. The theory is
XLEX ÂI\MFPI EQFMKYSYW HIWMKRW allowing for multipurpose use — like a capacious desk of no Á\IH WLETI [LSWI PIZIPW GER be arranged to suit — serve a broader range of needs. Her Raugh living environments of foam rubber are soft-sculptured gray masses resembling rock formations. Witty takeoffs on the grandiose aspirations she sees in high design, they can be shaped any way, for use indoors or out, and deteriorate elegantly. 6IÂIGXMRK LIV HMWPMOI SJ XMQI wasting housekeeping functions, their surfaces don’t show dirt but conceal or absorb it. In the show, an arrangement of them with mesalike tops cuddles up to an A-Z Homestead Unit (2001-5), a minimal structure whose steel frame, partly open to the desert, has birch panels and a corrugated roof. In her work, Ms. Zittel has not overlooked the need for herself and clients to escape the pressures of the world. Since 1996, she has been turning out the A-Z Escape Vehicle, a 100-cubicfoot trailer-type structure de signed for one, or maybe two,
occupants that, despite its name, remains stationary when in use. While uniformly retro-streamlined on the outside, it has a hollow womb-tomb interior that can be customized by buyers to suit their recreational fancies. Of the three on view, one owned by Ms. Zittel herself is ÁXXIH SYX PMOI E GEZI [MXL JEY\ rock walls, trickling water and colored lights. Another, owned by the artist’s dealer, Andrea Rosen, has a suave, elegant interior of padded velvet, with a glass-topped table. A third, the TVSTIVX] SJ 6SFIVX . 7LMJÂIV ER 3LMS FEWIH GSPPIGXSV MW ÁXXIH SYX [MXL ER MRZMXMRK ÂSXEXMSR tank of circulating salt water. For those needing more adventure, Ms. Zittel has also produced an edition of 10 A-Z (IWIVXIH -WPERHW E ÂIIX SJ GYXI PMXXPI ÁFIVKPEWW WXVYGXYVIW IEGL with a captain’s seat in the middle, that, lacking self-propulsion, drift gently in the water, hitched XS ER ERGLSV ,IV ÁVWX EXXIQTXW XS QEOI TYFPMG EVX XLI] ÂSEXIH gaily in 1977 at the Central Park Boat Basin.
Given the boldness and wide dispersion of environmental design, which today has even ÁPXIVIH HS[R XS HITEVXQIRX stores, Ms. Zittel’s “products” seem more than a little precious — on the boutique side, so to speak. What keeps her vibrant is her playful wit, wide-ranging interests and determination to apply the results of her continuing self-investigations to what she sees as the tension between lifestyle limitations and liberties.
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An idea whose time seems to have arrived is the use of stockpiled shi pping containers as modular units for building homes. Because of the balance of trade in the United States, these hefty steel boxes are piling up in ports around the country and posing a storage problem. Several architects and builders are taking advantage of this surplus to recycle the containers.
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Benefits of Container Housing
A hundred million shipping containers move products around the world each year. Invented in the 1950s by Malcolm McLean, these containers move approximately 90 percent of the world’s products. After making several voyages across the ocean or across the country, the used shipping containers begin to stockpile, creating storage problems. Now, shipping containers are being put to good use as alternative housing. The modular construction allows for building block designs that are economical and easily converted into a living space.
Container housing has several FIRIÁXW XLEX WIX MX ETEVX JVSQ traditional housing. The container has already been created. A typical container is taken out of the transportation service after 2 to 3 years and can then be purchased for a reasonable cost. Shipping containers are built out of steel to withstand the harsh sea air. They are also easily transportable to place on ]SYV PERH %RSXLIV FIRIÁX MW that no foundation is necessary for the container, saving additional costs.
Costs A container can be purchased in as-is condition. This means XLEX RS QSHMÁGEXMSRW LEZI FIIR made such as electrical, plumbing, room dividers, or windows. For people willing to take on XLIWI QSHMÁGEXMSR TVSNIGXW E basic container sells for $1,500 to $2,000 for one 40 feet long and 8 feet wide. Depending on the distance, this price may include delivery.
Companies worldwide in places like England, Amsterdam, and New Zealand have now started XS ÁRMWL XLI GSRXEMRIVW JSV consumers who don’t have the time or the skills to perform the QSHMÁGEXMSRW Several United States comTERMIW EVI SJJIVMRK QSHMÁIH containers. For example, Global 4SVXEFPI &YMPHMRKW -RG LEW ÂSSV plans for people interested in a complete container. This company also offers solar energy as an option. Price quotes are available upon request. Each 40-foot container is 320 square feet on average, so several can add up to inexpensive living space, according to the “Shipping Container Company Guide: Finding Shipping Container House Plans.” Containers generally cut overall construction cost by up to 50 percent.
Durability Typically, the containers are made from corrugated steel with XYFYPEV WXIIP JVEQIW 8LI ÂSSVing is 1/2-inch, marine-grade
plywood. The welds are waterresistant. The strength of the containers allow for stacking to create interesting architectural designs. When purchasing a shipping container to build out, check JSV -73 GIVXMÁGEXMSR 8LMW [MPP ensure that the container is QEHI EGGSVHMRK XS WTIGMÁGEtions. According to the WebUrbanist, containers can be used JSV SJÁGIW IQIVKIRG] WLIPXIVW and built into apartments or container cities.
Building Shipping containers are selfsupporting with beams and stout, marine-grade plywood ÂSSVMRK EPVIEH] MR TPEGI thereby eliminating time and labor during the home-building process. Cross said construction costs are comparable to those in conventional building. Four to seven units are used in a typical home, he said. Instead of nailing the siding they use “Super Therm”, a ceramic paint made by Superior
Products of Minnesota; it can be used as a paint, an adhesive, an MRWYPEXSV E ÁVITVSSÁRK QEXIVMEP and an acoustic barrier. With this ceramic paint, they claim the insulation capacity is equal to a conventional house.
Architect: Adam Kalkin Adam Kalkin, of www.architectureandhygiene.com , has also become enamored with shipping containers as an architectural solution. The idea to do something with shipping containers came to Kalkin, a New Jersey resident, when driving to New York City, where he saw sky-high stacks of the unused cargo containers in the shipyards he passed. ”The cargo containers, with a life span of about 20 years when used for their original purpose, LEZI ER µMRÁRMXI PMJI WTER¶ [LIR stationary and properly maintained,” Kalkin says. “To me they are like a treasured antique: they may not be inherently valuable, but the history and the storytelling add value.”
Environmentalists have embraced the design, applauding the recycling inherent to Kalkin’s designs. And advocates for affordable-housing like the design, since according to Kalkin, “the total cost of a house—between $150,000 and $175,000 after the buyer settles upon the various options— works out to be between $73 and $90 per square foot, about half the cost of the conventional $200 per square foot for reasonable quality, new construction in the Northeast.” Twenty-one thousand containers hit American shores every day of the year. Containers can be shipped to the interior of the country via trains and trucks. Shipping containers are like Lego toys and the modules can be assembled in thousands of ways.
1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design
Hippocratic Before Socratic “First do no harm” is a good starting point for everyone, but it’s an especially good starting point for designers. For a group of people who pride themselves on “problem solving” and improving people’s lives, we sure have done our fair share of the converse. We have to remember that industrial design equals mass production, and that every move, every decision, every curve we specify is multiplied—sometimes by the thousands and often by the millions. And that every one of those everys has a price. We think that we’re in the artifact business, but we’re not; we’re in the consequence business.
...designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about, this is kind of grotesque. “Consumer” isn’t a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be. Stop Making Crap And that means that we have to stop making crap. It’s really as simple as that. We are suffocating, drowning, and poisoning ourselves with the stuff we produce, abrading, out-gassing, and seeping into our air, our water, our land, our food—and basically those are the only things we have to look after before there’s no we in that sentence. It gets into our bodies, of course, and it certainly gets into our minds. And designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about it, this is kind of grotesque. “Consumer” isn’t a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be. Systems Before Artifacts Before we design anything new, we should examine how we can use what already exists to better ends. We need to think systems before artifacts, services before products, adopting Thackara’s use/not own principles at every step. And when new products are needed, they’ll be obvious and appropriate, and then can we conscientiously pump up fossil fuels and start polymerizing them. Product design should be part of a set of tools we have for solving problems and celebrating life. It is a means, not an end.
Teach Sustainability Early Design education is at a crossroads, with many schools understanding the potentials, opportunities, and obligations of design, while others continue to teach students how to churn out pretty pieces of garbage. Institutions that stress sustainability, social responsibility, cultural adaptation, ethnography, and systems thinking are leading the way. But soon they will come to HIÁRI [LEX MRHYWXVMEP HIWMKR QIERW % VIPMIJ XS XLSWI GSRWXERXP] XV]MRK XS HIÁRI XLI HMWGMTPMRI XSHE] 8LMW doesn’t mean no aesthetics. It just means a keener eye SR GSWXW ERH FIRIÁXW Screws Better Than Glues This is lifted directly from the Owner’s Manifesto, which addresses how the people who own things and the people who make them are in a kind of partnership. But it’s a partnership that’s broken down, since almost all of the products we produce cannot be opened or repaired, are designed as subassemblies to be discarded upon failure or obsolescence, and conceal their workings in a kind of solid-state prison. This results in a population less and less GSRÁHIRX MR XLIMV EFMPMXMIW XS YWI XLIMV hands for anything other than pushing buttons and mice, of course. But it also results in people fundamentally not understanding the workings of their built artifacts and environments, and, more importantly, not understanding the role and impact that those built artifacts and environments have on the world. In the same way that we can’t expect people to underWXERH XLI FIRIÁXW SJ E [EXIV ÁPXIV [LIR XLI] GER¸X see the gunk inside it, we can’t expect people to sympathize with greener products if they can’t appreciate the consequences of any products at all. Design for Impermanence In his Masters Thesis, “The Paradox of Weakness: Embracing Vulnerability in Product Design,” my student Robert Blinn argues that we are the only species who designs for permanence—for longevity—rather than for an ecosystem in which everything is recycled into everything else. Designers are complicit in this overIRKMRIIVMRK SJ IZIV]XLMRK [I TVSHYGI [I EVI XIVVMÁIH SJ ERH SJXIR PIKEPP] VMWO EZIVWI XS JEMPYVI FYX it is patently obvious that our ways and means are completely antithetical to how planet earth manufactures, tools, and recycles things. We choose inorganic
materials precisely because biological organisms cannot consume them, while the natural world uses the same building blocks over and over again. It is indeed Cradle-to-Cradle or cradle-to-grave, I’m afraid. Balance Before Talents The proportion of a solution needs to balance with its problem: we don’t need a battery-powered pooper scooper to pick up dog poop, and we don’t need a car that gets 17 MPG to, well, we don’t need that car, period. We have to start balancing our ability to be clever with our ability to be smart. They’re two different things. Metrics Before Magic Metrics do not get in the way of being creative. %PQSWX IZIV]XLMRK MW UYERXMÁEFPI ERH NYWX XLI exercise of trying to frame up ecological and labor impacts can be surprisingly instructive. So on your next project, if you’ve determined that it may be impossible to quantify the consequences of a material or process or assembly in a design you’re considering, maybe it’s not such a good material or process or assembly to begin with. There are more and more people out there in the FYWMRIWW SJ LIPTMRK ]SY XS ÁRH XLIWI things out, by the way; you just have to call them. Climates Before Primates This is the a priori, self-evident truth. If we have any hope of staying here, we need to look after our home. And our anthropocentric worldview is literally killing us. “Design serves people”? Well, I think we’ve got bigger problems right now. Context Before Absolutely Everything Understanding that all design happens within a GSRXI\X MW XLI ÁVWX ERH EVKYEFP] XLI SRP] WXST XS make on your way to becoming a good designer. You can be a bad designer after that, of course, but you don’t stand a chance of being a good one if you don’t ÁVWX GSRWMHIV GSRXI\X -X¸W IZIV]XLMRK -R KVETLMGW communication, interaction, architecture, product, service, you name it—if it doesn’t take context into account, it’s crap. And you already promised not to make any more of that.
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This speech was delivered by Metropolis’s editor in chief Susan S. Szenasy at the AIGA [American Institute of Graphic Arts] National Design Conference, held Oct. 23-26, 2003, in Vancouver, Canada and attended by more than 2000 design professionals and students. An enormous smoke cloud is seen hovering over the northeast United States. Its origin: ÁVIW FYVRMRK WSQI[LIVI MR China. The dramatic image— with hundreds of others like it—is posted on NASA’s Earth Science web site; here satellite cameras record the degradation of our home planet’s environment. Such graphic information is now routinely available to anyone with an Internet connection. We can see for ourselves how human actions in one part of the world effect human health in another, distant part. On the day of the smoke cloud many New Yorkers experienced breathing problems. Most of XLIQ TVSFEFP] FPEQIH XLI HMJÁculties on local pollution caused by automobile and bus exhaust and chemical clouds wafting across the Hudson from New Jersey. But China? That’s too far away! Well, as it turns out, you and I share one large breath with all human beings and other creatures living on this earth. We are closer to each other than we ever could have imagined. And now we have the science and the technology to document how interconnected we really are. The smoke cloud over the northeast United Sates is a powerful graphic communication. The NASA web site may not be designed to your liking, but it provides information that is very hard to ignore. And this is where ethics enters the picture. Continuing to act in a way that you know can have harmful consequences is irresponsible, unethical behavior. So, you didn’t WXEVX XLSWI ÁVIW MR 'LMRE [L] should you be held responsible for polluting the environment? But I say that you—collectively, as graphic designers—are startMRK SXLIV ÁVIW QIXETLSVMGEPP] speaking. You are responsible for helping to create 40% of North America’s solid waste; paper accounts for 81 million tons of waste annually, according to
the Printers National Environmental Center. Furthermore, the pulp and paper industry is the third largest industrial buyer of elemental chlorine. Chlorine is used to whiten paper, a process which is linked to a proven cancer-causing chemical called dioxin. You know this, because you’ve been reading a little beige booklet in your conference packets. This booklet—No. 7—is part of the AIGA’s Design Business Ethics series and deals extensively with print design and environmental responsibility. It documents current knowledge on the subject and gives useful contact information. It is there for you to use. My health, your health, and your children’s health depend on how well you understand the information provided for you by the AIGA in booklet 7. I am a graphic design client and I, along with thousands of other clients, need for you to do the right thing. Here is my story: I am the editor of a design and architecture magazine called Metropolis. We print around 60,000 issues 11 times a year at Brown Printing Company, in East Greenville, Pennsylvania. Brown’s giant web offset presses, perfect binders, and poly-wrappers produce some 500 titles, including elegant fashion catalogs and mass-market news magazines—all of them designed by someone, maybe some of you in this room. &VS[R MW ER IJÁGMIRX RSMW] industrial plant with hazardous waste signs posted everywhere. The paper waste, just from our small print-run, is staggering: KEVFEKI GERW EVI ÁPPIH [MXL off-color color proofs during the test-runs. As employees of a magazine that has a commitment to covering environmental issues that shape our designed environment, our editors and art directors live with constant guilt. We know that the processes that produce those beautiful color pages are highly toxic and wasteful. We have been assured that our paper comes from managed forests and that waste paper is recycled, but those assurances are not enough for us. We know more can be done, but it seems that we’re too small to make a difference. However, if every art director and every editor of every one of those 500 titles at
Brown started asking questions about soy inks, recycled papers, safe press-clean-up procedures, chlorine content, and washable stock—the kind of paper that [William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s environmental manifesto] Cradle to Cradle is printed on—we might end up with a less toxic product and contribute less to the earth’s health problems. Now, to me, the choice is not to eliminate print because it’s dirty, but rather to clean up its production and then use print in ways that only print can provide. For instance, when Paula Scher redesigned Metropolis some four years ago, we decided to print the feature well on a different paper stock from the rest of the magazine—this to provide a distinct, non-commercial zone of uninterrupted reading, an experience signaled by the tactile and visual change in the paper. As we spend more time in the visual world of our computer screens, we search for multisensory experiences in our physical world. Paper technology, or polymer technology like Michael Braungart talks about, can satisfy some of our sensory RIIHW WS [I QYWX ÁKYVI SYX how to clean up paper technology and make it work better. It is the right thing to do. It is the ethical thing to do. For a while now, I’ve been talking about something called the Gross Designed Product, the GDP, and how it needs to push environmental change. Think about this for a moment: an interior designer will buy 1,200 ergonomic chairs for one job, while you and I may buy 12 chairs in a lifetime. If each interior designer demanded that the chairs they specify be designed for disassembly, made of nontoxic materials, and their parts not shipped from thousands of miles away where they might be made by semi-slave labor, the contract furniture industry would have to pay attention. Solid knowledge about your materials and processes can indeed be power—and this power is in the numbers. Put these numbers together and you have an interior design community that can make positive change, at least the way furniture is made. And we’re talking about changing one industry at a time. Interior designers’ new buying habits can also change the way
industrial designers think about their own work. Charged with making environmentally safe products, industrial designers would no longer by slaves to the annual style change in endless ergonomic chairs with slight differences for each brand. As a result, the designers might even design a whole new set of products that better suit our new ways of working. Some months ago, Santa Fe architect Ed Mazria sent us a paper he wrote, connecting architecture, its processes, and its materials, to global warming. We knew this, but didn’t have the facts to prove it. So, with me searching for the GDP’s environmental impact, and all our editors looking for designs that make a positive—and beautiful—contribution to a cleaner environment, Ed’s paper hit a nerve. It became the backbone of our October cover story—the cover itself being three rolls of blueprints emitting a huge black cloud of smoke, an image designed by Pentagram’s D.J. Stout—with the accusatory
cover line: “Architects Pollute.” )H VIGSRÁKYVIH XLI SPH pie chart that depicts North America’s energy use showing that architects put in motion 48% of the fossil fuels that cause global warming. I think this may be a conservative estimate when we know what goes into buildings—such as interior furnishings, signage, and electronics—as well as all that paper your profession puts there. So the GDP is probably responsible for producing 80% or more of global warming gases. And make no mistake about it: global warming is here. It’s no longer discussed—except perhaps by Bush-the-Younger’s administration—as a remote possibility. The climate changes we’re experiencing are dramatic, we EPP ORS[ XLMW ÁVWX LERH So, is there any good news in all of this? Yes. And it has to do with design. Designers today stand on the brink of being seen by society as essential contributors to its health, safety, and welfare. If you—together with the other design professions—
decide to examine the materials and processes endemic to your work, as well as demand that these materials and processes become environmentally safe, you will be the heroes of the 21st Century. Truly, when you get away from interdisciplinary squabbling and join forces with other design organizations—each organization is now making steps in this direction, by the way—you will have the kind of power-positive ERH PMJI EJÁVQMRK TS[IV XLEX [Bauhaus founder and interdisciplinary designer] Walter Gropius couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams. Ethical decisions are personal. It is you—each one of us—who has to decide to do the right thing. Today we ponder the meanings of words like morality, responsibility, obligation, community, social justice, interconnectedness: words we once knew intimately, then proceeded to forget as we got lost in the pursuit of what we used to call “the good life.” We have observed the sorry
spectacle of corporate executives in handcuffs, doing the perp-walk on the 6 o’clock RI[W 8LIWI IXLMGEPP] ÂE[IH CEOs may still have their illgotten gains, but they don’t have the power that once quickened their heartbeats. And watching them, we began to understand that power without ethical standards can dissipate in a New York minute and cause a great deal of anguish all around. I am exceedingly hopeful about the future of design, and designers’ growing power in society. This hope comes from my students, and students I meet everywhere. The best of them know that they follow in the footsteps of the great, humanist designers of the 19th and 20th centuries. At Parsons, where I have been teaching design history for twelve years, I was asked to HIZIPST E GSYVWI SR IXLMGW ÁZI years ago. I interpreted this request as a sign of the times, as a rising need for some sort of anchor in a world of great uncertainty, a kind of re-assertion of our complex humanity. We are much more than homo economicus and we know it. Consumption isn’t our only value, and we want to assert our interest in the life of the mind, in culture, art, science, and more. Yes, I thought, this request from Parsons was to be a search for values. I was WYJÁGMIRXP] MRXVMKYIH F] MX FYX also puzzled by how I could pull it off. Do I build ethical arguments on such designer-issues as knock-offs or cutting and pasting without giving credit? Though important, these issues seemed paltry next to the big UYIWXMSR XLEX ÁZI ]IEVW EKS was focused on environmental ethics. But that, too, seemed to ghettoize the subject of ethics. Environmentalists by then were a boring lot, often rabid zealots; when they were designers, they often made ugly things and buildings. 8LIR - [EXGLIH XLI ÁPQ Mindwalk, based on Fritjof Capra’s writings, and realized that we needed to talk about a whole new world-view. I realized we needed to get away from the Cartesian, linear, mechanistic thinking that shaped modern humanity and gave us the Industrial Revolution (and with it amazing things like central heating and computers,
as well as horrible things like SZIV ÂS[MRK PERHÁPPW ERH EMV pollution). I understood that we needed to start thinking of the world as a system, a cyclical system of interconnections, a web of connections—”The web of life,” as Capra says. We needed a comprehensive ecological world-view. And I also understood that this was a longterm project, not to be mistaken for a marketing trend like one furnishings manufacturer told us. (“Green?” he said. “Yes, well, we did that last year, but we’re doing something really exciting this year!”) In fact, green was only a part of it, a central part that must deal with environmentally benign materials and processes, restoration, recycling, reclaiming: all those things we have to do to remedy the damage we’ve done to the natural environment and to ourselves in it. Have you asked yourself why, for instance, is a mass media like TV running ads for cancer drugs? We must be in the midst of an epidemic. And the general population already knows that there are such things as chemical carcinogens: everyone remembers seeing the movie Erin Brockovich. So as I planned the course, it became clear to me that we needed to talk about the ethical implications of Descartes’s cogito ergo sum principle of a man-centered universe and contrast it to a more communal, collaborative approach in which social justice is at least as important as individual well-being. This is where my students and I [SYPH ÁRH SYV IXLMGEP MWWYI ERH along the way also take part in building a new world-view. We don’t have a great summingup of this world-view yet—as cogito summed up the modern world. We now use awkward and hard-to-grasp words like “sustainability,” “eco-design,” “green design,” “green-washing,” “biophilia,” “biomimicry,” “bioinspiration”; we even use “universal access” and “universal design,” since social justice is part of this new thinking. These are early days, but incredibly exciting ones. The last time that humanity was challenged to rethink the world, we came up with the Enlightenment, which served our kind very well up to now. So use whatever words you like, but understand that you
are at the center of a revolution where an ethical compass is useful and even essential. This may be a time when intellectual pursuits become as important EW ÁRERGMEP ERH IRXIVXEMRQIRX pursuits. For without understanding the new world taking shape around us, we will surely go the way of dinosaurs. So what can you do to be part of XLMW IGS VIZSPYXMSR# - SJJIV ÁZI quick suggestions. 1) You—designers—should get out of your darkened rooms [MXL XLIMV FMK ÂEWL] MQEKIW ERH ÁKYVI SYX LS[ XS XEPO EFSYX design in the sunlight. In fact, just try talking about design once in a while without showing anything. It astounds me how creative people can readily buy into the mind-numbing, homogenizing visuals of corporate blandness. PowerPoint presentations have killed thinking in the late 20th Century. We’re living in new times now. Stop using PowerPoint for everything. Give others credit for being able to follow your argument without the aid of bullet points for every factoid ]SY ÂEWL 7TIRH ]SYV XMQI ERH our precious energy resources on creating truly inventive and persuasive presentations. Let’s cut back the time we spend looking at screens in mechanically cooled rooms that always hum with the powerful machines required to keep them a steady 70 degrees. Let’s design rooms that take advantage of the great and beautiful world outside with its shimmering waters and colorful foliage and cooling breezes. 2) This shift of world-views is a complex and serious business. It needs all kinds of expertise and it needs every one of you, and more. Many of you are already involved in education. Turn your involvement into something WMKRMÁGERX VIPIZERX ERH XMQIP] Develop courses where collaboration, research, social justice, ERH WGMIRXMÁG ERH GYPXYVEP understanding are at the heart of the design problems being solved. Make universities— with their unique capacity for research and analysis—into the intellectual leaders of your profession, with you as their collaborator. We know what happens when the design professions—all of them, including architecture and graphic design—lead academia. That’s
what we have now and everyone’s unhappy. 3) If you teach at a university where there’s a teachers’ college, MRÁPXVEXI XLEX XIEGLIVW¸ GSPPIKI with your design ideas by making friends with the professors there. While it’s great that some designers do wonderful programs with public schools, these efforts are few and far between. We have an urgency here. It would be more productive to educate the educators. Help XLIQ ÁKYVI SYX LS[ XS EHH ]SYV design methods to a more linear way of learning. This can lead to a better understanding of the designed environment by future grade-school and high-school teachers and their students. Such an understanding is crucial to a well-informed citizenry. Nowhere was this need for design-informed citizens better demonstrated than during the so-called design debates about the schemes presented for rebuilding the World Trade Center site. Our esteemed architecture critic on our newspaper of record confused a planning and massing document with architecture; the architects—except for Daniel Libeskind—spoke in jargon that even they couldn’t penetrate; and the public had no idea what they were looking at and what the design debate was about. 4) Become citizen designers. When architect Beverly Willis and I launched our civic group, R.Dot, in those heartbreaking days after 9/11, we didn’t know we could attract politically savvy designers who’d want to attend regular meetings and work very hard pro bono. As it turns out a graphic designer, Roland Gebhardt; an industrial designer, Brent Oppenheimer; and an architect, Ron Schiffman, became the guiding lights behind several of our detailed and comprehensive position papers on managed streets, culture zones, and housing. Roland and Brent, for instance, used the kind of anthropological and anthropometric studies they learned as industrial designers ERH SJÁGI TPERRIVW XS GVIEXI E whole new system of maps. They called it experience mapping, which is a way to understand what works and what doesn’t work in neighborhoods by interviewing residents and visitors about how they use the neighborhoods. Experience maps are
great graphic presentations of people’s everyday lives. They’re much more revealing than cold statistics. The citizen designer is on the ascendant, especially post 9/11. [Esteemed graphic design critic] Steve Heller even named one of his books after him and her. 5) Find collaborators in whatever area of expertise your project requires. Become a design detective, a forensic designer: the path has been cut for you by others, make it wider. 3RI SJ XLSWI TEXLÁRHIVW MW Kirsten Childs, the interior design partner in the Croxton Collaborative, which has become a sought-after green EVGLMXIGXYVI ÁVQ &YX ]IEVW ago Kirsten just began looking for the ingredients of the chemical soup she was brewing with the furniture and furnishings she was specifying. So she hired a chemist. Together they started asking questions about the ÁFIVW ÁFIV FSEVHW ÁRMWLIW ERH glues she was putting into ofÁGIW´YWYEPP] PSGEXIH MR WIEPIH buildings designed to control the temperature. Individual decisions. Personal, ethical choices. That’s what Kirsten started out with. Others MR LIV ÁIPH EVI ÂS[MRK She’s a good example for you, too. Thousands of these personal choices put together will make our world, as Bush the Elder so memorably hoped, a “kinder, gentler” place. But I’m also with Blanch Du Bois on this. We need to start relying more on “the kindness of strangers.”
Mark Brest van Kempen
Artist
Since the late 1980s, Bay Area artist Mark Brest van Kempen has produced art that connects people with plant and animal habitat, architecture and infrastructure. His interest is to reveal the social, ecological and historical layers that encompass a given “place.” ,MW IEVP] MRÂYIRGIW KVS[MRK YT MR 9XEL [IVI 2ERG] Holt’s Sun Tunnels and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. And, although he does not physically shape the land as his medium, his real inspiration has been the pursuit to convey how to live on the land sustainably. There are a number of artists today concerned with how we interact with nature, and Brest van Kempen is one of a handful that have chosen the long hard road to create “green” public art. His commitment to educating about ecological systems is evident, as after 20 years he has only recently begun to see the fruits of his labor. This is a product of both his dedication to this work and the more recent interest and evolution of public art department directors who are seeking to capture funding for projects via water and transportation infrastructure funding. In 2000, Brest van Kempen created an indoor wetland prototype entitled “Cleaning System” while in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin (CA). The installation diverted wastewater JVSQ E [EWLMRK QEGLMRI MRXS E ÁPXVEXMSR TSRH SJ TPERXW XEHTSPIW ERH ÁWL XS GPIER ERH QSRMXSV XLI health of the water. “This piece was part of a series of works to research and develop human infrastructures that can be grafted to natural systems, blurring the distinction between natural and man-made,” stated &VIWX ZER /IQTIR 8LI I\GIWW [EXIV ÂS[IH SYXWMHI the building to water exterior plants. The following year he created another installation at the Headlands entitled Drinking Fountain for People and Plants, a functional fountain designed to return E TSVXMSR SJ GMX] [EXIV XS REXMZI TPERXW ÁPXIVMRK XLI water and sending it back to the sewer clean. In this work, a person takes a drink from the fountain, which then transports the excess water down a diagonal planter, watering plants, thus giving back XS REXYVI 8LMW [SVO I\IQTPMÁIW &VIWX ZER /IQTIR belief that, “Taking and giving are automatically intertwined in the same act.”
These two works have been pivotal for the artist’s career and have increased his eligibility for sustainable public art projects. By charting this new territory Brest van Kempen broke ground for visual artists who have primarily shown in galleries and who have GVIEXIH XIQTSVEP WMXI WTIGMÁG [SVOW [MXL RSRTVSÁXW in the public sphere, to do more large scale infrastructure artworks. Ravenna Creek Project, 2002-2009 For two decades watershed groups in Seattle rallied to redirect a creek, naturally fed by springs and runoff, which had been diverted to a sewer line and [EXIV XVIEXQIRX TPERX SZIV ÁJX] ]IEVW EKS 8LMW WLSVX sighted decision unnecessarily treated the creek water, and by 2002, the county stepped up to divert 6EZIRRE 'VIIO FEGO XS [LIVI MX LEH ÂS[IH LMWXSVMcally, except now mostly underground. Brest van Kempen was then competitively selected through a national public art RFQ process and was invited to trace this historical and present day Ravenna streambed down a one-mile corridor to Lake Washington, [LMGL ÂS[W MRXS 9RMSR &E] The public art works created for the Ravenna Creek Project, which are currently in multiple phases of completion, include an outfall structure and viewing station where the creek enters the pipeline underground from the park; and additional interventions along the sidewalks to the lake including three daylighting vaults, blue demarcation lines and inset spelling ‘Ravenna Creek’ on the sidewalks, and embedded plaques with inset capsules of native seed inside. For this project Brest van Kempen memorialized the existence of Ravenna Creek, working hand-in-hand with the City of Seattle Parks and Recreation and Metro/King County Drainage and Wastewater (Public Art Budget $200,000).
Upcoming Projects For those of you living in or visiting the Bay Area, the unveiling of Brest van Kempen’s latest public art project in Oakland, Views of the Greenbelt, includes a combination of sculptural viewing devices, strategiGEPP] TPEGIH WGYPTXYVIW SJ REXMZI ÂSVE ERH JEYRE ERH interpretive signage to focus viewers’ attention on the history and ecology of the Rockridge-Temescal Greenbelt and Temescal Creek. Funding was allocated by a local measure for Clean Water & Safe Parks passed in 2002, which provided $2.8 million for public art projects pertaining to this measure. This project was competitively commissioned through the City of Oakland’s Public Art Commission in 2005 (Public Art Budget $75,000). Brest van Kempen was also selected this summer by the City of San Jose’s Environmental Services Department (ESD) and the Public Art Program in collaboration with the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant to create an interpretive artwork as an integrative aspect of the current Plant tours. Some 4,000 visitors each year are invited to consider the issues that impact water conservation to help ensure the safe treatment of 110 million gallons of sewage a day on behalf of 1.4 million residents (Public Art Budget $100,000). It is projects like these, green sustainable public art, that create what the Oakland Arts Commission considers “social equity . . . which can enhance the educational, recreational and aesthetic aspects of the landscape, adding quality of life and appreciation for the ecology of the land. To make accessible or transparent the processes that provide clean water can help safeguard communities.” The use of public art as a catalyst for community dialogue is a unique and exciting opportunity for the general public, utilities providers, and the art world. Mark Brest van Kempen’s work is subtle, almost invisible in some cases. However, sustainable art is about walking lightly on the land, something that this artist knows how to do very well.
Fumi Masuda
Designer
by Priscilla, 04/26/07
Japanese designer Fumi Masuda, whose Pile Chair was featured this morning, was recently in São Paulo, Brazil to give a lecture about sustainable design. He also conducted workshops involving Brazilian and Japanese design students and some members of Coopamare, a group of people that earn their bread collecting used papers from the street to sell for the recycling industry. I had the chance to talk to Fumi before the lecture. He told me a little bit about his history and offered some interesting perspectives on the sustainable design market. For those that are not familiar with the work of this designer, Fumi Masuda is the director of the EcoDesign Institute, professor of the Design Department at Tokyo Zokei University, President of Open House Inc., member of the Japan Design Consultant Association and founder of O2 Global Network in Japan. He devotes most of his time to a design consultant for smaller local industries and as a teacher at universities specializing in sustainable design. His company, Open House, develops electric gadgets, tools, home appliances and, like he says, “what you want me to….”
Priscilla: What is your concept of sustainable design? Fumi: Sustainable design is not design to sustain our society – because our society is not sustainable anymore. So we have to re-think and start again, to build something new. We should come back to learn from nature. The concept of waste is something that mankind has created. There is no waste in nature. Everything just goes in circles, everything is recycled, including us. So, it is our responsibility to reuse products again and again until they can not be used like a product anymore, but as a material. This is recycling. I am quite optimistic in this way. In Japan there are good efforts from big companies: Ricoh is recirculating the actual copy machines they made years ago and have re-appropriated and repaired them; Fuji LV SURGXFLQJ UHF\FOHG ÀOP 7KDW LV ZKDW ZH have to do. It is not necessary to excavate natural resources anymore, there is enough material available to us already. Priscilla: You told me that young people in Tokyo are fascinated with Lohas (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability). What do you think about that? Fumi: In Japan now we have this trend, the Lohas trend (it’s a marketplace for goods and services focused on health, the environment, social justice, personal development and sustainable living). It came from Ameri-
can marketing and dramatically changed Japanese lifestyle. But I believe that is just a trend, only a style, not a real concern. It is like some fashion designers in the eighties in Japan. They called themselves ecological designers because they were using earth tones in their clothes. That doesn’t make any sense, but it happens. It makes things more complicated, fools people. People who don’t know much about it might make a mistake. We should not do that. We have to live more carefully and not try to make money by telling people that you are doing ecological things when you are not. This is really not ecological. Priscilla: Do you believe that some companies need to alter their brands toward more sustainable design in order for sustainability to really take root in our society? )XPL %UDQG LV D UHà HFWLRQ RI WKH PDUNHW So we can’t say to change the brand. You DFWXDOO\ KDYH WR FKDQJH WKH PDUNHW ÀUVW DQG then brands follow. It is the economy; it is a matter of money. So the market itself has to change. You can not say to a brand: your value is not good, change it. They have the right to continue in this system, in capitalism. I am not a politician, designers are not SROLWLFLDQV , DP QRW ÀJKWLQJ WR FRQYLQFH people to change their way of living. Something will happen very soon. They will notice that they have to change on their own.
Marketing Sustainability to Industrial Designers
“Regulations in Europe and Japan mandate greener products, and, if the U.S. does not design its products to be in step with these regulations, they will not compete in the global marketplace,” says Jacquelyn Ottman, president of J. Ottman 'SRWYPXMRK E ÁVQ XLEX LIPTW FYWMRIWWIW HIZIPST ERH QEVOIX IRZMVSRQIRXEPP] WSYRH TVSHYGXW ERH WIVZMGIW %W GSRGIVR JSV XLI IRZMVSRQIRX IWGEPEXIW worldwide, Ottman, the author of Green Marketing: 3TTSVXYRMX] JSV -RRSZEXMSR WIIW XLI RIIH XS NYQTWXEVX IGS IHYGEXMSR EQSRK 9 7 TVSHYGX HIZIPSTIVW Design: Green, a groundbreaking program in which 3XXQER TPE]W E PIEHMRK VSPI [EW HIZIPSTIH XS EHdress this concern. %GGSVHMRK XS 3XXQER WIZIVEP )YVSTIER REXMSRW particularly the Netherlands, are well ahead of the U.S. when it comes to sustainable product design in XIVQW SJ ORS[PIHKI FEWI WSTLMWXMGEXMSR PIZIP ERH ¥¥¥VIKYPEXMSRW %RH while the American building and interior design industries have been formally “greening” themselves since the creation of the U.S. Green Building Council and the EPA’s Energy Star program over a decade ago, product and industrial design have lagged behind in formalized maturation and development.
µ8LI (IWMKR +VIIR TVSKVEQ [SVOWLSTW TVSZMHI JSVQEPM^EXMSR F] TVSZMHMRK WXVEXIKMG EGXMSREFPI business solutions for sustainable product design,” Ottman says. “We use the Business-Ecodesign 8SSPW HIZIPSTIH F] XLI -RHYWXVMEP (IWMKRIVW 7SGMIX] SJ %QIVMGE XS LIPT %QIVMGER HIWMKRIVW QEOI the business case for green and address the technical factors of eco-design.” While the Design: Green workshops offer globally applicable strategies, Ottman fosters a grassroots approach in each host GMX] F] XETTMRK PSGEP MRHMZMHYEPW EPVIEH] MRZSPZIH [MXL ZEVMSYW EWTIGXW SJ WYWXEMREFMPMX] XS MRXIVEGX with attendees. 3XXQER FIPMIZIW XLEX XSHE]¸W product manufacturers and industrial designers should address environmental challenges from the inception of the design process. µ·+VIIRMRK YT¸ MW [LIVI TVSHYGX ERH MRHYWXVMEP HIWMKR LEZI FIIR JSGYWIH for the past 20 years, in response to increasing IRZMVSRQIRXEP VIKYPEXMSRW ¶ WLI WE]W µ2S[ [I RIIH XS QSZI XS[EVH E RI\X KIRIVEXMSR SJ TVSHYGXW ERH WIVZMGIW XLEX YWI JI[IV VIWSYVGIW JVSQ XLIMV MRGITtion, thereby WMKRMÁGERXP] VIHYGMRK XLIMV RIKEXMZI affects on the environment from the start.” -RHYWXVMEP HIWMKRIVW QE] LEZI XLI QSWX HMJÁGYPX
time addressing sustainable design, according XS 3XXQER EW XLI GSRGITX SJ TVSHYGX µÁXRIWW¶ MW largely foreign to them. “Industrial design is all about mass production, and sustainability is about ÁXXMRK XLI TVSHYGX XS XLI YWIV XLI GPMQEXI ERH XLI local resources,” she says. “Industrial designers will LEZI XS YRHIVWXERH ERH EHHVIWW XLMW HMJJIVIRGI MR order to fully and effectively embrace sustainability as it is practiced by related disciplines.” Ottman cites “holism” as an important way that green designers can learn from each other and promote sustainability. µ% LSPMWXMG ETTVSEGL XS FYMPHMRK HIWMKR VIWYPXW MR IRLERGIH SZIVEPP IRZMVSRQIRXEP ERH UYEPMX] TIVJSVQERGI ¶ WLI WE]W “Product designers should interface with building designers and interior designers, because if the product designer is creating the carpet or lighting SV JYVRMXYVI XLI] LEZI XS YRHIVWXERH LS[ XLIWI elements are going to interact with the interiors.” Marketing also plays a key role in green design MRRSZEXMSR ERH WYGGIWW µ+VIIR TVSHYGXW LEZI E history of misperception about their performance,” Ottman says, mentioning laundry detergents that PIJX GPSXLIW HMVX] ERH WTYXXIVMRK ÂSVIWGIRX PMKLXW XLEX GEWX E KVIIR LE^I EW I\EQTPIW 7LI XLMROW XLEX [LMPI XIGLRSPSK] LEW IZSPZIH XS XLI TSMRX [LIVI QER] SJ XSHE]¸W KVIIR TVSHYGXW EGXYEPP] SYXTIVJSVQ XLIMV µFVS[R¶ GSQTIXMXSVW E RIKEXMZI WXMKQE WXMPP lingers among many consumers. “Marketers need to acknowledge these barriers and continually address them in order to innovate the industry,” 3XXQER WE]W µ%RH HIWMKRIVW GERRSX fall into the trap of creating green products and thinking that consumers will pay a premium for XLEX JEGX EPSRI 8LI] [SR¸X 6IEP FIRIÁXW TPYW GSSP HIWMKR LEZI XS FI FYMPX MR ¶
3XXQER LEW E GPIEV ZMWMSR JSV XLI JYXYVI SJ WYWXEMREFMPMX] MR %QIVMGE µ*MZI ]IEVW JVSQ RS[ -¸H PMOI XS WII KSZIVRQIRX MRMXMEXMZIW XLEX LIPT PIZIP XLI TPE]MRK ÁIPH JSV WYWXEMREFPI XIGLRSPSKMIW ¶ WLI WE]W EHZSGEXMRK XLEX GSRWYQIVW TE] XLI VIEP GSWX XS WSGMIX] JSV TVSHYGXW XLI] FY] WYGL EW E GEVFSR XE\ SR TVSHYGXW ERH WIVZMGIW XLEX GVIEXI KVIIRLSYWI KEW emissions. Ottman feels that this requirement alone [SYPH QEOI KVIIR IRIVK] STXMSRW QSVI EXXVEGXMZI EW [SYPH MRGVIEWIH GSRWYQIV MRGIRXMZIW WYGL EW MRGSQI XE\ VIFEXIW JSV YWMRK KVIIRIV XIGLRSPSKMIW 7LI EPWS FIPMIZIW XLEX GSRWYQIVW WLSYPH FI JYVXLIV IHYGEXIH MR XLI VIEP IRZMVSRQIRXEP MQTEGXW SJ XLI products they buy. “I think we need a crying Indian for the renewable energy industry to really capture XLI IQSXMSR FILMRH XLMW QSZIQIRX ERH XS QSXMZEXI consumers to start scrutinizing both products and manufacturers,” she says. “Design: Green is working toward these goals by educating the current and future leaders of green design right now.”
Bringing Schools toward Sustainability
How to introduce the visions of the sustainable development in alls missions of the university of art and design? This was the main interrogation to make this project. What should be analyse and why? What are the methods, and tools should be implement? Which roles the university of art and design to promote sustainable development can play? Finally, how to inform, to training and to integrate directs and indirects actors of the university into the process? Teaching Sustainable issues in design professions embody a huge potential for accelerating the change towards sustainability development. New transversally action platforms are necessary. Bringing a common understanding of the sustainable development is a key condition for a successful integration of good sustainable practices. Sustainable-Design R&D goal are the search and HIZIPSTQIRX SJ WTIGMÁG XIEGLMRK EMHW ERH WXVEXIKMIW JSV 9RMZIVWMXMIW SJ EVX ERH HIWMKR [MXL XLIMV WTIGMÁG XIEGLMRK ÁIPHW XS LIPT XLIQ JSV MRXIKVEXMRK GSRWIquently and transversely the criteria’s of Sustainable Development in their activities and missions. Research team Yves Corminboeuf (lead) / Guido Styger / Daniel Dubas (IDHEAP) Assistants Elizabeth Fischer (Editorial work) / Francesco Gilardi (Geographer) / Jérémie Mercier (Graphic design) 4EVXRIV %6) *IHIVEP SJÁGI SJ XLI XIVVMXSVMEP HIZIPSTment), Section of sustainable development / BIRD
3JÁGI SJ MRZIWXMKEXMSR SR VIG]GPMRK ERH WYWXEREMFMPity) / Cantonal service of sustainable development, State of Geneva / Ecointesys / Equiterre / ICAST (Institute for the communication and the analysis of sciences and technologies) / IDHEAP (Institute of advanced studies in public administration), University of Lausanne / ITNP (Institute Ground, Nature and Landscape) / LDES (Laboratory of didactic and epistemology of sciences), University of Geneva / Pole of the environment, University of Geneva ;IFWMXI [[[ WYWXEMREFPI HIWMKR GL