CategoriesDesign Concepts and Techniques
Sustainable Design
Design that reduces environmental harm through material choice, long life, repair, reuse and responsible production.
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No open-access works for Sustainable Design are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Victor Papanek's book Design for the Real World (1971) charged designers with responsibility for waste and harm, and William McDonough and Michael Braungart's Cradle to Cradle (2002) proposed products whose materials could return to nature or industry without loss. Between them lies a set of practical strategies: use less material, choose renewable or recycled sources, build for repair and disassembly, and make things worth keeping.
Designers apply these ideas in different ways. Piet Hein Eek has built furniture from scrap wood since his graduation in 1990, and Álvaro Catalán de Ocón's PET Lamp project has artisans in several countries weave shades onto discarded plastic bottles. In architecture, James Wines and his studio SITE merged buildings with planting, and Eko Prawoto in Indonesia builds with bamboo and local labour. Look past the label: a durable, repairable object often does more good than one merely made from recycled material.