The environmental-driven elements towards ecological systems of furniture design

Abstract

This paper discusses the engagement of furniture design with environmental elements and ecological system in design literature. The purpose is to establish a gap in the area of ecological design. A sustained relationship of field study has resulted in two major areas of designs: industrial design (ID) and manufacturing technology design (MT), while one minor field found is business and industrial marketing (IM). The term ID describes the creative thinking involved in industrial cycle methodologies. Instead, aesthetics and ergonomics, it applies manufacturing engineering principles to develop ecological system in forms of design. As for the term MT, structured measures are commonly applied on the manufacturing and industrial technology engineering. Another prominent term is the “green design and manufacturing” or “environmentally conscious manufacturing” (ECM), which means the material sources go through processed systems in producing the goods with several operations; large production scale to meet the ecological consumer behaviour, and the materials must be specified in the earliest stages due to the design and production stages. Furthermore, IM remains a minor area that is slightly important since the environmental communication is derived from the ecological system issues. Based on greenhouse gases (GHG) function, this initiative drives business to business communication (B2B) that could be considered as ecological economics player. Normally, the manufacturing sector complies with the national economic transformation agenda for the international intention. Finally, combination of three areas of study may lead to the probable finding of the ecological influence or elements and the extraction of environmental design, standards and theory. Hence, this topic is to focus on the criteria, capability and characteristics (3C) of ecological system with the awareness of producing the recycling product design (forms context) and to help practicing designers identify problems, issues and gaps in relation to ecological concept using suitable methodologies and its applications.