In the old-normal way of thinking and doing business, the design profession’s marching orders were defined by convenience, stylishness, speed, and most of all, profit. And we literally bought into the wayward direction of these products, because they expressed our codependent, rather unhealthy way of life. But design has a higher purpose, now. Driven by regulations, changes in consumer demand, fear of future lawsuits, and a green-tinged business environment, design has suddenly increased its IQ. As opposed to passive, accidental design that doesn’t ‘know’ where it’s going or who will use it, next-generation design is analytical, and ergonomic – packed with synergistic information and “biologic.” [callout title=Callout Title]next-generation design is analytical, and ergonomic – packed with synergistic information and “biologic.”[/callout]
For example, when Procter & Gamble examined the energy impact of its detergents, it discovered that washing machines were the largest single energy user in the whole laundry system. Since most detergents only work effectively in warm water, a lot of energy is used to heat the water, so P&G researchers went back to the lab and invented a detergent, Ariel Cool Clean, which works in cold water, saving energy without any loss in performance. Says P&G’s sustainability website: “We combine two key strengths – consumer understanding and science – to deliver sustainable innovations that don’t require tradeoffs in performance or value.” Is this mission statement ‘green wash’? Partly, but it’s also an ethical direction, and possibly, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These kinds of opportunities exist in all types of design – we just need cultural instructions to look for them. The challenges we face require radically redesigned production systems, landscapes and structures – all sensitive to changing variables like energy, health, climate and resource availability. We need an inspired new generation of whole-systems designers to express changing values in their creations. Society should grant the design profession the social stature of doctors and lawyers – calling for pride, skill, and integrity in the design field. As with the age-old physician’s oath to “do no harm”, we need a designers’ oath to “design nothing harmful.” Designers reflect cultural direction, and their designs in turn are responses to directions they receive from the culture, often intuitively.
In this moment of massive change, we need democratic, values-driven design. In this precarious moment, we are designing not just gadgets and packaging but we’re also redesigning the civilization that contains them. In the Renaissance, the highest mission of a designer was to glorify God; in our time, the highest mission is to fit the natural world like a glove fits a hand. If we integrate values such as efficiency, moderation, and fairness into our designs, using tools such as precision, prevention and participation, we stand a chance of creating a realistic, affordable civilization. However, if we integrate the spoiled assumptions of our current era into our products, buildings and landscapes, we’ll lock ourselves into a future that is literally designed to fail.
[callout title=Callout Title]our designs will be so well conceived that fewer regulations will be necessary.[/callout]Ideally, our designs will be so well conceived that fewer regulations will be necessary. For example, if we design products that are fully recyclable and a collection system that makes recycling effortless, it will become almost impossible not to recycle. If we use eco-intelligent ingredients and procedures throughout the industrial sector, we will radically reduce many environmental and health impacts that have plagued us for centuries. In effect, we will integrate the law right into the product.
Just as an architect needs to know the characteristics and constraints of a building site before designing a house, designers of all types need to work with biologists and sociologists to make sure their designs are in synch with natural and cultural constraints. “We can’t practice architecture without knowledge of forestry and energy issues,” wrote Paul Hawken in the foreword to my book, Deep Design: Pathways to a Livable Future. “Chemical Engineering without epidemiology and biology is inexact and lacking, and transportation systems that don’t take into account community, family and climate are not systems at all.”
Like scientific papers, designs and technologies should be peer-reviewed. Experts as well as everyday users should be able to choose what enters our world, and what doesn’t. Products that prove harmful – whether physically, environmentally, or socially, should get very low grades, even if heavy, misleading advertising made them popular initially.
Since cheap supplies of energy and materials are no longer a sure thing, designers need to be socially as well as technically competent. For example, state-of-the-art batteries for electric vehicles and elsewhere contain lithium, an element that is most abundant in Bolivia — a country the U.S. is currently not on great terms with. And heavy rare earth metals like dysprosium, which make electric motors up to 90 per cent more efficient, are also geographically perplexing: 99 per cent of all dysprosium comes from 200 mines in China.
In the near future, enlightened designers won’t just say, Here’s what you can have; instead they will wisely ask, What do we need? How can design make your life better, not just busier and more expensive?
Designing Like Our Lives Depend on It – and They Do
A civilization on the cusp of mega change needs to prioritize its design goals, and channel public, private, and non-profit resources toward those goals. At the top of the list are systems that:
- Prevent climate change
- Preserve, conserve, and restore water supplies
- Minimize pollution and health impacts
- Effectively and humanely prevent unwanted birth
- Make recycling automatic
- Restore farmland and forested land
- Optimize social capabilities as well as needs
This is not a trivial to-do list, is it? Some of the heavy-hitting human activities that are especially in need of redesign are energy production, wastewater treatment, and the manufacture of automobiles, cement and plastic. Fortunately, designers all over the world are immersed in research that is yielding major breakthroughs. Consider the following examples.
The cement industry accounts for six per cent of global CO2 emissions (twice as much as the aviation industry), and that figure will rise as Asia and Eastern Europe continue to build infrastructure. Some analysts predict that the cement industry could become a larger contributor to climate change than the entire European Union by 2030.
Calera Corporation in California is challenging a cement-making paradigm that has remained constant for more than 2,300 years with a process that’s similar to the way coral reefs self-assemble.
Calera injects carbon dioxide emissions from power plants into seawater, which creates a chalky carbonate that is added to gravel and water to make concrete. This process avoids the need for the high temperatures typically supplied by coal-fired kilns, creating a cement that is 40 percent solidified carbonate by weight.
The industrial production of algae for fuel is being assessed as a way to scrub CO2 emissions from power plants. Algae may prove to be the most efficient way to produce biofuels, so why not create a partnership between power plants and biofuel factories? Raytheon Company and others are currently running pilot programs to see if algae can efficiently absorb carbon dioxide, then be made into a biofuel. Though ethanol from corn was originally thought to be a serendipitous substitute for gasoline, it doesn’t significantly reduce greenhouse gases; too much gas-emitting energy is used when the corn is fertilized, harvested, and processed. Many scientists rank the power density of algae far higher than corn and other prospects like cellulose-rich switchgrass. Other advantages of algae are that its production doesn’t compete with food and feed crops for prime farmland, and that it can be grown wherever there’s sunlight and water, even in deserts, where land is cheap, or at wastewater treatment plants, where algae growth and harvest could help purify the water as well as power the plant.
A company in Venice, Italy is using synthetic natural gas made from algae to power electricity-producing turbines. The carbon dioxide released by the combustion goes back into the process, to stimulate the next generation of algae. A San Diego start-up company, Sapphire Energy, proposes to use existing infrastructure – pipelines, refineries, and vehicles – to produce a fuel that has the same molecules as conventional fossil fuels. Their product has already been flight-tested by various airlines and given good grades: it combusts at lower temperatures than conventional jet fuel and has 4 percent better mileage in the tests.
However, as an industry, algae-based biofuel faces stiff political competition. So far, the 18 senators from nine corn-growing U.S. states have consistently voted to subsidize corn-based ethanol. However, the current federal mandate for biofuels is 1 billion gallons by 2020, and it’s quite possible that algae can become part of that equation.
A third technological innovation that meets high-priority needs is plastic that incorporates CO2 right into the product. Currently, 10 per cent of oil consumed is used for plastics manufacturing and packaging. The plastics industry is also responsible for heavy emissions of greenhouse gases and toxic substances found in products like baby bottles and coatings in tin cans; vinyl toys, and flame-retardants. Novomer Company, in upstate New York, may have a new kind of plastic that could radically transform the industry. According to CEO Jim Mahoney, the manufacture of polypropylene carbonate (PPC) reduces petroleum usage per unit by at least 50 per cent while also converting CO2 from pollution into valuable materials. As in the biofuel and cement processes mentioned above, the CO2 could come from power plant or industrial scrubbers.
Looking ahead, it’s not hard to imagine an ‘industrial ecology’ facility at which these four industries would share and optimize resources like CO2, waste heat, electricity, and distribution pipelines.
Designing With Nature
A new movement in the world of design, called biomimicry, is destined to change the way our world functions. By developing a genuine understanding of how the world’s species meet their needs, designers can draw on a living catalog of inventions. Says Biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus: “You take an Engineering problem like how to lubricate or adhere to something, and you find examples of how nature has solved that problem. If you look carefully, you can always find technologies shaped by natural selection that hold the answers.” Dietar Gurtler, an engineer with DaimlerChrysler, used that very approach, studying the shapes of fish to design an aerodynamic compact car. Says Gurtler, “Evolution has formed creatures that are very economical with energy.”
Similarly, Oregon State University Professor Kaichang Li studied the way mussels cling to surf-battered shoreline rocks, discovering that they exude threads of protein as an adhesive. He had a flash of insight: why not add amino acids to soybeans to create a water-resistant, non-toxic adhesive? Several years later, many homes and buildings became less toxic when one of the country’s largest plywood manufacturers replaced cancer-causing formaldehyde in its adhesive resins with soybeans. Elsewhere, paint companies have mimicked the self-cleaning technique of the lotus leaf, which maintains its solar exposure even in swampy conditions; the microscopic structure of its top layer makes dust particles stick to raindrops, which then drip off the leaf.
One thing the world desperately needs is an alternative for the flush toilet, another of humanity’s biggest blunders. What do you have when you put a drop of clean water into a gallon of sewage? Sewage. What do you have when you put a drop of sewage into a gallon of water? Sewage. Now for the critical question: What do you have when you put billions of gallons of industrial wastes into sewage, every day? A system that prevents the recycling of nutrients back into agriculture.
However, the bio-inspired Living Machine, perfected by bioneer John Todd, is a solar aquaculture system that looks like a greenhouse. A succession of organisms like snails, cattails, microbes, fish and even roses purifies wastewater as well or better than conventional wastewater treatment plants; the state of Indiana has already certified this technology as legal treatment. The synergies between this naturalized system create a technology with no noticeable odor (I’ve toured a few); apartment buildings, office buildings and neighborhoods could, with start-up subsidies, make our way of life far more affordable overall, providing jobs and a very important balance between what we consume and what we grow. The missing link in this open loop may be more perceptual than actual: health concerns. Surely, microbiology, vermiculture and compost science are sufficiently advanced to change the wastewater paradigm, too.
Designing for a New Normal
In the end, we will get to a more sensible way of living by telling and retelling a story that promotes a joyfully moderate, less stressful, sustainable lifestyle. We’ll build a new civilization the way we built the current one: with incentives, social rewards, changing styles and designs, new kinds of technologies and new ways of meeting our needs.
It’s time for us to stop seeing the world as it is, and begin to see it as it could be. Design should take its marching orders from cultural consensus: if our society demands that only nature-compatible design is acceptable, future generations will regard ours as an era that designed its way out of a blind alley.
