Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore

Today, I listened to a lecture by Nathan Shedroff. The lecture was entitled, "Sustainable Innovation". In his lecture, Nathan shared his thoughts about sustainability in design. According to him, there is no sustainability in design. He thought that more sustainable design is needed but it is definitely not integrated in design at the moment. This is something that definitely should be improved in our society today. Design is something that surrounds us everyday; the chairs we sit in, the bikes we ride, and even my laptop I am typing on right now. If design is not sustainable, our society is in big trouble.

I find everyday I am thinking about what can be improved in my life, especially with design, since I am a designer myself. In one of my lecture halls, the chairs squeak, constantly. Every time a person shifts their weight, their chair makes a loud noise. It bothers me to think about who designed these chairs? Did they test them out before they installed one hundred of them? What bothers me is that these chairs are so bad that they will eventually have to be replaced. How come the person designing them did not design them to last a long time? I think this is something all designers should think about when designing something, because essentially, something should be made to last, not to be thrown out- (which also relates back to Nathan’s example of the Nokia phone as well.

This lecture really helped me understand the future of design and how I can impact that. Sustainability is something that not only impacts designers but something that should impact everyone too.