Adaptive Capacity: Design
as a Societal Strategy for
Designing ‘Now’ and
‘Co-futuring’
‘Heads are round so that thoughts can change direction.’
Francis Picabia
‘We are designing nature and we are subject to her laws and powers. This new condition demands that design discourse not be limited to the boardrooms or kept inside tiny disciplines.’
Bruce Mau1
During the past two centuries it could be argued that ‘design’ was self-absorbed in its own culture, besotted in the power bestowed upon it by commercial interests, and assured of its ubiquitous presence in consumers’ lives. As has been noted above, design’s supreme role has been, and continues to be, about giving form to the concurrent industrial, consumer and information economies, all connected within a greater globalized economy. Design makes the material forms of these economies culturally acceptable. This is not to say that design has been devoid of altruism for broader societal concerns. Nor has design totally ignored the effect of its materialized outcomes on nature. Yet, as we look at man-made artefacts, the built environment, and the manufacturing and public infrastructures, we are gazing on an aesthetic that represents collectively endorsed visions of ‘beauty’ verified as economically viable. Many other visions of beauty simply do not make it to reality because they do not meet with the current culture of economics. The reality of this ‘beauty’, from the motor car to the iPod, from the modern housing development to the supermarket, is that it does not reflect ‘true cost economics’, i.e. it only reflects a market price, economic growth in the form of GDP and the accumulation of economic capital in very powerful transnational companies – all these represent one form or another of financial activity. These economic metrics do not reveal the true ecological and social costs. The supermarket represents the epitome of capitalist success, in its realization of modernity, cleanliness, choice and, of course, its design. The packaging entices the buyer, celebrates the brand and assures the consumer of satisfaction, but is economical with the truth about the story of its birth – the effects of the supply chain; the working conditions of the labourers and factory workers; the destruction of habitat or ecological capacity; the water footprint and energy required to manufacture it; the carbon footprint including ‘food miles’; the chemical additives to enhance the longevity and visual seduction of the food; and the potential illnesses that the consumer may be exposed to as the result of the typically high saturated fat, salt and sugar content of many processed foods. Our current notion of beauty in everyday design therefore needs contesting. This beauty will not sustain us in the future.
We need new visions of beauty – we could call this beauty, ‘beautiful strangeness’, a beauty that is not quite familiar, tinged with newness, ambiguity and intrigue, which appeals to our innate sense of curiosity … beauty that is more than skin deep, beauty that is envisioned by society, because the current version of beauty is largely ordained by big business and governments. We need a beauty that serves all in society, healing society’s divides (around wealth, health, education, access to digital and other technologies). We need a beauty that we can adapt as future circumstances change. We need a beauty that does not ‘de-future’, a phrase coined by Tony Fry,2 but keeps options open for our grandchildren. We need a beauty that encourages new ideals, values and concept of humankind’s ‘growth’, genuine human flourishing (what the Greeks called ‘eudaimonia’), beyond the blinkered thinking of economic growth as ‘progress’. To be progressive now and in the future may be to think about ‘economic degrowth’ as expressed by Herman Daly, as slowing down the economy and putting our energies and efforts into other societal values and measurables.3 Daly quoted the Victorian author, poet, artist and reformer John Ruskin: ‘That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin.’ Here we return full circle to the dissenters in the first half of the 19th century who witnessed, and dared to critique, the downside of the Industrial Revolution (see Chapter 2, p37), but could not stop the juggernaut of industrial ‘progress’. The unsustainability of our present production and consumption patterns, the endemic and growing split between rich and poor, and the real uncertainties of climate change, are our contemporary warning signs. While we are dealing with a very different world to Ruskin, with a global population of more than six times that of the 1850s and with significantly more complexity, there are many more means of democratic participation to help influence the outcome that were available to Ruskin and his followers.
In our search for ‘beautiful strangeness’ we need to avoid another pitfall that has frequently hijacked design. Design tends to focus on imagining and engineering the future with its emphasis on concepts, prototypes, scenarios and virtual 3D visualizations. These will remain valuable exercises, but sustainability demands that we care for the present much more than the future. The US architect Bruce Goff referred to the ‘continuous present’ as something we can affect, whereas the past is gone and the future will take care of itself.4 Stewart Brand says we can affect ‘now’5 and he describes now as:
‘the period in which people feel they live and act and have responsibility. For most of us now is about a week, sometimes a year. For some traditional tribes in the American northeast and Australia now is seven generations back and forward (175 years in each direction).’
We can change now, the present, more easily than the past or future. Recalling Anne-Marie Willis’s notions that design is about ‘preconfiguration and directionality’ (pp36, 87), and noting the urgency of the sustainability debate, suggests we should place more attention on preconfiguring now to give it fresh directionality. To make a choice as to what to preconfigure means bringing design decisions into a wider societal arena, because business and government tend to use design as their strategic futuring tool for their directionality and not for society. New products and services about to appear at the retailers, and new buildings about to come onto the market, were conceived and designed months ago by business, and certified as meeting regulatory and legislative requirements by government. The generation of new artefacts and buildings to replace them are currently being designed as you read. In other words, the real decision making has been done by others. Obsolescence of ‘old’ artefacts and the in-built directionality (and hence ‘ecological or sustainability rucksack’) of the new artefacts has already been decided. These observations hint at a need to democratize design’s role to a wider range of decision makers that better reflect society as a whole. This implies that design needs to take on a more activist role on behalf of society/societies and the environment.
The potential to expand the agenda for design activism therefore seems ripe. If designers wish to contribute to new visions for sustainable development, such as Janis Birkeland’s notion of ‘positive development’ (see p24) or ‘economic degrowth’ then they have to be prepared to take on the mantle of a design activist. Designers need to rebalance their focus between ‘what next’ and ‘what now’. Aspiring design activists have to be prepared to take on multiple roles as non-aligned social brokers and catalysts, facilitators, authors, co-creators, co-designers and ‘happeners’ (i.e. making things actually happen). This suggests a much richer and diverse agenda for design than was outlined by Tim Brown, the chief executive officer and president of one of the world’s largest design agencies, IDEO, in the Harvard Business Review in June 2008.6 Brown posited design thinking as a means to transform how products, services, processes and strategy are developed, and made special reference to exploring human-centred design as a means to discovering untapped markets. There was no mention of design as a strategic tool for business to address sustainability or its societal responsibilities. Design needs to break out beyond the visions of business. Design research and education are fortunately one step ahead of design practice. At the same time as Brown’s article was published, attendees at the conference Changing the Change in Turin set a rather more challenging agenda for the global design community and the results of a European project called DEEDS established a set of 24 core principles for ‘designing for sustainability’.7 Changing the Change set a new agenda:
• Sustainability must be the meta-objective of every possible design research activity.
• Sustainability here is intended as a systemic change to be promoted at the local and global scale. It will be obtained through a wide social learning process, reorienting the present unsustainable transformations towards a sustainable knowledge society.
• Design research has to feed the social learning process towards sustainability with the needed design knowledge. That is, with visions, proposals, tools and reflections to enable different actors to collaborate and to move concrete steps towards a sustainable knowledge society.
And, on the new ‘designer role’, Changing the Change noted:
‘designers as connectors and facilitators, as quality producers, as visualizers and visionaries, as future builders (or co-producers). Designers as promoters of new business models. Designers as catalizers of change.’
These aspirations, and more, are embraced by the core principles of the DEEDS project under the acronym ‘SCALES’ representing Special skills, Creating change agents, Awareness, Learning together, Ethical responsibilities and Synergy and co-creating (Appendix 5). The design research and education community is activated and active. The question is what does this agenda mean for the wider design community, especially the practitioners?
There is a strong sense that design activism in a sustainability framework reinvigorates the agenda for design, can genuinely affect ‘now’ and give fresh directionality towards a more sustainable future (Appendix 6). If this premise is accepted, then where can existing and emergent design activists begin making a contribution?
Design for a Better Future
The happy sustainable planet?
A number of studies by the New Economics Foundation reveal that the wealthiest and most materialistic societies are not necessarily the happiest or most ecologically secure.8 The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is a new metric measuring ‘life satisfaction’ multiplied by ‘life expectancy’ and divided by ‘ecological footprint’. An HPI of 100 is best, 0 is worst; a reasonable ideal HPI is 83.5, the highest recorded was Vanuatu at 68.2 and lowest was Zimbabwe at 16.6. This model recognizes human reliance on nature. HPI is a measure of ecological efficiency delivering human well-being. Countries at the top of the list may surprise: first is Vanuatu, the pacific island state, second is Colombia and third is Costa Rica, all blessed with good ecological capacity and populated with contented, long-lived peoples (Table 7.1). Bottom-ranking countries all come from Africa, a continent where even the top country only has an HPI of 57.9. Despite all their development and wealth, the G8 countries fall in the middle rankings below China, India and Brazil, countries with a high gross GDP, although low per capita GDP. Clearly material development and wealth do not necessarily equate with subjective notions of a good or better life. Significantly, the NEF reports also indicate that higher social capital tends to exist where life satisfaction is highest. Building social capital and improving human well-being are therefore two mutual ambitions for design activism. Figure 7.1 gives a schematic of the individual and sustainability dimensions of well-being that need to be balanced, as a means to consider these ambitions. This schematic also aims to reduce the distance between the designer as professional and the designer as citizen and consumer.
The Happy Planet Index by the New Economics Foundation
Countries |
Happy Planet Index |
| Top three countries 1 Island state of Vanuatu, Pacific Ocean 2 Colombia 3 Costa Rica |
68.2 67.2 66.0 |
| Bottom three countries 176 Burundi 177 Swaziland 178 Zimbabwe |
19.0 18.4 16.6 |
| G8 countries 66 Italy 81 Germany 95 Japan 95 Japan 108 UK 111 Canada 129 France 150 US |
48.3 43.8 41.7 40.3 39.8 36.4 28.8 |
| Other high gross GDP countries 31 China 62 India 63 Brazil |
56.0 48.7 48.6 |
|
Source: Marks et al (2006)9 |
|
Bio-local and bio-regional
Climate change will drive a dramatic re-evaluation of local and regional biotic (living) assets because existing patterns of agriculture, water use, human habitation and biodiversity will change with rising global temperatures (see Figure 3.1).10 Countries, regions and localities with a high ecological capacity per capita are going to fare better than those with a low ecological capacity per capita and a reliance on imports. Most countries will have to deeply consider their food, energy and water security in a more uncertain world. Designers like William McDonough are already helping the Chinese address these problems, with ambitious plans for urban rooftop farming.11 There are also other sources of inspiration. There is a substantive model in Cuba’s resilience and transition to a low-input oil economy caused by the 1960 US trade embargo and other embargoes from some members of the international community, deepened further with the demise of the Soviet bloc and communist era starting in the early 1980s. Cuba experienced radical shifts in land ownership, societal organization and application of permaculture design thinking (see p56) to reduce dependence on external synthetic inputs and by regenerating using nature’s own ability to maintain levels of fertility. Cuba’s approach recognizes a synergistic relationship with its bio-region. Bio-regionalism has also been applied to built environment projects such as Beddington Zero Emissions Development, (BedZED) near Croydon in the UK12 and is finding new expressions in visions of productive green urban landscapes.13 Applying co-design to re-examine local resources, ecological and social capacity, can only boost the existing localization movements that are already seeking transition to a more sustainable way of living, producing and consuming.
Spheres of well-being for consideration by designers
The ‘credit crunch’ emerged in summer 2007 in the US then quickly spread through the global economic systems. Within a year, institutions of the international banking system that have been around for 150 years or more faced severe difficulties, some like Lehman Brothers became bankrupt and ceased trading. Governments across the globe re-nationalized banks and building societies and central banks pumped in vast sums of money to stem the crisis.14 The game has yet to play out, but this is the most stringent of warnings that the existing models of financial investment and borrowing do not guarantee future economic stability; nor are they promoting sustainability. The capitalized and borrowing structure of most organizations depends on these global financial systems, so there is a profound question mark over the future viability and stability of existing enterprises, both commercial and not-for-profit. Fortunately, there has been a growing interest by some European governments in new enterprise models with an ambition to grow human and social capital rather than just financial capital.15 These models involve public–private partnerships, social enterprises and community interest companies. How does design work with and offer support to these emerging socially orientated enterprises, with the social entrepreneurs, while making sure that they tread lightly on environmental resources too? The application of co-design approaches offers a means of increasing participation in design processes (see pp147–160), so can potentially improve social networking, cohesion and capacity, in order to build resilience and enable future adaptation.
New ways of making and building
Just 3 per cent of social enterprises in the UK manufacture goods, the remainder provide services to specific target users/groups in the social sector and/or focus on environmental objectives. There is no reason why social enterprises cannot compete with commercial, privately owned enterprises to manufacture goods and deliver product-service systems. These social enterprises are already focused on the institutional, social and economic dimensions of the sustainability prism as part of their raison d’être, so are primed to choose some of the emergent markets, for example, the growing markets for better inclusive designs for elderly people in the North; new products, services and housing for the South; more products of sound ethical and environmental standards; and more products and services using local resources and labour.
There are myriad possibilities for distributed local manufacturing by joining up real local centres of production or by using digital networks to deliver replicable files for local rapid prototyping. Another option, again facilitated by the internet, is the retailing of downloadable digital designs to provide cutting patterns and instructions for making, or the sharing of designs with open source and Creative Commons licences. All these possibilities could herald a quiet revolution in production at a local level with new enterprises and/or by individual consumers using locally available materials, saving considerable transportation and other embodied energies associated with the present model of distant factories and extensive distribution chains.
Eco-efficient futures (slowing and powering down)
The design activists focusing on eco-efficiency will need to apply ‘best practice’ life cycle thinking, light-weighting and use of appropriate emergent technologies in order to deliver the Factor 4 to Factor 10 improvements in efficiency that will ensure sustainable consumption and production for future generations. Closing the loop at the end-of-life of products, by designing for assembly and disassembly, and applying the best eco-design strategies, needs to be combined with behavioural change to really deliver efficacy. So, design strategies to slow people down, to create more meaningful, but less energy intense, ways of meeting everyday needs and experiences are of great importance. As the slow movement gathers momentum,16 design activists at SlowLab17 are exploring and creating visions and experiences of ‘positive slowness’. Perhaps the co-creative power of those who see the benefits of slowing down can encourage step-change solutions.
Regeneration and renewal
The Millennium Assessment Reports by the United Nations painted a pretty grim picture of the state of health of the global ecosystems that support all forms of life, including human.18 With the global population set to increase by around 30 per cent in the next 40 years (from 6.7 billion at present to 8.9 billion by 2050)19 the stresses and strains on these ecosystems look set to increase. Restoring the health of these ecosystems, and their capacity to absorb the waste and toxins that human activity generates, is an urgent priority. Cradle-to-cradle thinking, as espoused by William McDonough and Michael Braungart 20 is essential. A simple mantra to follow, established by Edwin Datchefski, is that all design should be ‘cyclic, solar and safe’.21 He later added ‘efficient’ and ‘socially conscious’ to this invocation. These are invaluable ways of helping reposition our thinking to help address how we use our ecological capacity per capita more wisely, but the question is how do we improve ecological capacity without risking reduced fertility or cataclysmic failure? Again, the lessons are in ecological design, biomimetic design and permaculture design. The design activist must aim for and encourage others to co-design robust ecosystems whatever the location, from urban city centre to suburb or remote rural setting.
Regeneration and renewal is also about restoring our fractured and unequal societies. This requires inclusion of a wider range of actors and stakeholders in the design and decision-making processes. Communities are creative if given the right encouragement and resources to prove it. Designers’ potential to assist these communities in realizing new visions is considerable, but it needs bringing to life on the ground.
Yet another facet of regeneration and renewal is to care for and retrofit the existing built environment and infrastructure. It is all too easy to be a pioneer with new products, services and buildings but often the reality is that we just need to reconfigure what already exists. We need to re-evaluate what we have already got and add further value by design. Retrofitting buildings to reduce energy and water demand, to improve working and living conditions with restorative plants and mini-ecosystems, or better natural daylighting, are all valid tasks for the design activist in co-operation with the residents, workers, owners, utilities and other stakeholders.
Maverick, solo designer or co-designer?
Designers, like artists, are perceived by the public as possessing ‘natural’ creativity and the boundary between these two creative agencies is pretty blurred.22 The public also struggles to really understand who or what designers are, with the exception of architects and graphic/industrial/interior designers.23 In contrast, designers see themselves as distinct from artists as design is ‘purposeful and tied by the boundaries of the client’s brief’, as well as being a creative activity. The vagueness with which the public perceive designers may be an advantage to the maverick, solo designer who wishes to gain the attention of the public by an act of design activism, since such an activity would be expected of artists. Of course, the maverick designer does not have to consider doing something in the public domain and many of the examples cited in Chapter 4 illustrate work aimed at quietly improving eco-efficiency or creating an artefact with potentiality to encourage positive behavioural change. Each designer may find some projects are more easily pursued solo, whereas others are better suited to more participatory, co-design modes of work. For designers that already hold an ‘iconic’ status in the profession, and with a wider public, they may bring effective leverage to solo maverick and participatory design projects.
Anticipatory Democracy and the ‘MootSpace’
At the root of the concept of design activism is the philosophical and ethical position that design in the service of society has to embrace democracy. This contrasts with design in the service of a client where it has to embrace the client’s contract and, but not always, the client’s philosophy and ethics. Graphic designer Shawn Wolfe notes that ‘whether you are the faithful consumer of cultural products or you’re the instrument or mastermind of some faithless cultural production … you are involved and you’re accountable for the part you play’.24 If we are all involved then we should all be part of the decision-making processes, so we can equally share responsibility for the outcomes. Suzi Gablik, in her book The Re-enchantment of Art, ‘calls for an end to the alienation of artists and aesthetics from social values in a new inter-relational, audience-oriented art’.25 In the same way, design needs to enjoin with active citizens to co-create and co-design the new ‘now’, the counter-narrative that points to a new directionality, towards sustaining that which genuinely sustains.
Design activists can contribute to dialogic discourse about new social goals and, in doing so, the creation of new social values. To set out on this road is to quickly realize that design, especially when deploying co-design approaches, becomes a political and democratic act. As Alvin Toffler noted in his polemical book, Future Shock, in 1970, we need new forms of anticipatory democracy, ‘We need to initiate, in short, a continuing plebiscite on the future’.26 He called these ‘social future assemblies’ which would convene in each nation, city and neighbourhood ‘charged with defining and assigning priorities to specific social goals’.27 Today, we may add that the democracy in these assemblies should embrace all people in direct participation, as distinct from traditional representative democracies that tend to dominate models of contemporary politics. ‘Participatory democracy’ is seen by some as being in the domain of civil society and a community-based activity and is certainly a tenet of green politics.28 These assemblies would also need to encourage deep democracy which ‘suggests that all voices, states of awareness, and frameworks are important’, and welcomes both central and marginalized voices.29 Designers as facilitators and catalysts can use participatory design processes to achieve ‘participatory’ and ‘deep’ forms of democracy. These contemporary assemblies would focus on changing ‘now’, with a view to directing sustainable futures. In doing so they would ‘co-future’, give new directionality to the future.
MootSpace – a modular build environment for design democracy
MootSpace examples
Do these participatory democracy assemblies or something similar already exist? Yes, in the living ‘marae’ of the Maori in New Zealand, which are also found across Pacific island cultures including the Cook Islands, Tonga, Samoa and Hawaii.30 There are also historical examples, such as the secular meeting houses and moot halls of Europe, whose origin dates back to the 9th century Anglo-Saxon system of administration called ‘hundreds’ when meetings would be held outdoors at designated spaces, mounds or hills.31 Taking these living and past traditions suggests the notion of a new democratic space for design. Let’s give it the designation ‘MootSpace’ where every citizen (and citizen designer) knows their voice will be heard.
Where would these MootSpaces be? Wherever they are needed. They can be ephemeral, temporarily marked or erected – a chalk circle in the city square, a mown circle of grass on the village green, or a mark in the sand on a beach. The MootSpace could occupy an existing building or it can be a new modular structure configurable to suit the needs of the local group, community and environs (Figure 7.2), one that can be assembled locally, perhaps using local materials in combination with rentable modular units. Whatever form the MootSpace takes (Figure 7.3), it should be a space that the group or community ‘owns’, one where they can comfortably discourse and co-design their ‘now’ and their future. Perhaps this is one arena where design activism will gather momentum to deliver participatory democracy, human flourishing and ecosystem renewal.
Notes
1 Mau, B. (2003) Massive Change, Phaidon, London, p16.
2 Fry, T. (2008) Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, Berg Publishers, Oxford.
3 See Wikipedia (2008) ‘Uneconomic growth’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uneconomic_growth, and Herman Daly’s 1999 lecture on the topic at www.feasta.org/documents/feastareview/daly1.pdf
4 De Long, D. G. (1995) The Architecture of Bruce Goff, 1904–1982: Design for the Continuous Present, Prestel Verlag, Munich.
5 Brand, S. (1999) The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility, Phoenix/Orion Books, London, p133.
6 Brown, T. (2008) ‘Design thinking’, Harvard Business Review, June, pp84–92.
7 Changing the Change, 2008, http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?page=645&idEvent=23; the DEEDS project, 2008, www.deedsproject.org
8 Marks, N., Abdallah, S., Simms, A. and Thompson, S. (2006) The Unhappy Planet Index, edited by Mary Murphy, New Economics Foundation (NEF), London, available at www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/dl44k145g5scuy453044gqbu11072006194758.pdf, accessed September 2008
9 Ibid.
10 IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment, Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (edited by Pachauri, R. K and Reisinger, A., Core Writing Team); Lynas, M, (2008) Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, Harper Perennial, London.
11 Green Roofs, 2008, www.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=524; see also William McDonough + Partners, www.mcdonoughpartners.com/
12 Wikipedia (2008) ‘BedZED’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BedZED
13 Viljoen, A. (2005) Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, Architectural Press, London.
14 Wikipedia (2008) ‘Credit crunch’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Crunch
15 See for example, the UK government’s action plan for social enterprise, www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector/social_enterprise/action_plan.aspx
16 The Slow Planet, www.slowplanet.com/
17 SlowLab, www.slowlab.net
18 Millennium Ecosystem Assessments, www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx
19 UN, 2004, www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf
20 McDonough, W. and Braungart, M. (2002) Cradle to Cradle, North Point Press, New York.
21 Datchefski, E. (2001) The Total Beauty of Sustainable Products, RotoVision, Crans-Près-Céligny.
22 Smith, G. and Whitfield, T. W. A. (2005a) ‘Profiling the designer: A cognitive perspective’, The Design Journal, vol 8, no 2, pp3–14.
23 Smith, G. and Whitfield, T. W. A. (2005b) ‘The professional status of designers: A national survey of how designers are perceived’, The Design Journal, vol 8, no 1, pp52–60.
24 Wolfe quoted in Heller, S. (2003) ‘Brand name dropper’, Steven Heller interviews Shawn Wolfe in Heller, S. and Vienne, V. (eds) Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, Allworth Press, New York, p48.
25 Gablik quoted in McCoy, K. (2003) ‘Good citizenship: Design as a social and political force’, in Heller, S. and Vienne, V. (eds) Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, Allworth Press, New York, p6.
26 Toffler, A. (1971) Future Shock, Pan Books, London, p431.
27 Ibid. p432.
28 Wikipedia (2008) ‘Participatory democracy’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy
29 Wikipedia (2008) ‘Deep democracy’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_democracy
30 Wikipedia (2008) ‘Marae’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marae
31 Wikipedia (2008) ‘Moot hall’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moot_hall