Ecological Design Issues and Role of Designers
Since the Industrial Revolution, many propositions in the design field were raised with unsustainable design principles. The architect- designer Victor Papanek suggested that industrial design has murdered by creating new species of permanent garbage and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air. For these issues, R. Buckminster Fuller, who was invited as University Professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 1960s, demonstrated how design could play a central role in identifying major world problems between 1965 and 1975. That included following contents:
- Review and analysis of world energy resources
- Defining more efficient uses of natural resources such as metals
- Integrating machine tools into efficient systems of industrial production
In the 1992 conference, ‘The Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet”, a proposition which world is presently on the path of energy production and consumption which cannot be sustained was reported. It contained that Individuals and groups around the world have a set of principles to develop strategies for change that might be effective in world economics and trade policies, and the design professions will play a role in it. Namely, those meant that design profession becomes not what new products to make, but how to reinvent design culture likely to be realized. He noted designers firstly have to realize that design has historically been a dependent, contingent practice rather than one based on necessity. The design theorist, Clive Dilnot noted design becomes once again a means of ordering the world rather than merely of shaping products. As a broader approach, the conference of ‘Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet’ 1992, emphasized that designers should challenge for facing human problems. These problems were mentioned to six themes: quality of life, efficient use of natural resources, protecting the global commons, managing human settlements, the use of chemicals and the management of human industrial waste, and fostering sustainable economic growth on a global scale.
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—Jane Alpert (b. 1947)
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