The Designer's Role in Facilitating Sustainable Solutions

Abstract

Introduction Sustainability is rapidly becoming an issue of critical importance for designers and society as a whole. A complexity of dynamically interrelated ecological, social, cultural, economic, and psychological (awareness) problems interact and converge in the current crisis of our unsustainable civilization. However, in a constantly changing environment, sustainability is not some ultimate endpoint, but instead is a continuous process of learning and adaptation. Designing for sustainability not only requires the redesign of our habits, lifestyles, and practices, but also the way we think about design. Sustainability is a process of coevolution and co-design that involves diverse communities in making flexible and adaptable design decisions on local, regional, and global scales. The transition towards sustainability is about co-creating a human civilization that flourishes within the ecological limits of the planetary life support system. Design is fundamental to all human activity. At the nexus of values, attitudes, needs, and actions, designers have the potential to act as transdisciplinary integrators and facilitators. The map of value systems and perspectives described by Beck and Cowan 1 as “Spiral Dynamics” can serve as a tool in facilitating “transdisciplinary design dialogue.” Such dialogue will help to integrate the multiple perspectives and diverse knowledge base of different disciplines, value systems, and stakeholders. Further expansion of the “integral vision” by Wilber 2 consolidates a framework for understanding, acknowledging, and weaving together different perspectives and worldviews. Esbjorn-Hargens and Brown 3 describe the application of this framework to solving complex problems of local and global relevance, and to sustainable development. When applied to design, this kind of framework can help us to conceptualize how different value systems and different onto-epistemological assumptions change our experience of reality, and therefore intentionality behind design. This change in why we design things and processes in turn affects what and how we design. Since sustainability requires widespread participation, communities everywhere need to begin to shape local, regional, and global visions of sustainability, and to offer strategies to engage humanity collectively in cooperative processes that will turn visions 1 D. Beck and C.C. Cowan, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996). 2 K. Wilber, A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision of Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality (Dublin: Gateway, 2001). 3 S. Esbjorn-Hargens, “Integral Ecology: The What, Who, and How of Environmental Phenomena” in “World Futures,” Journal of General Evolution 61:1–2 (2005): 5–49; and B.C. Brown, “Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development (Part 1),” AQAL Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 1:2 (2006): 1–39.