Design News is your tiny dose of design, technology and other important news, curated monthly by Interwoven Design. In this series we share the latest on our favorite topics, including fashion design, collaboration in 3D printing, sculpture, and an upcoming design event. In this issue: Pharrell Williams to lead LV, Reebok and Botter team up to unveil 3D Printed Trainers inspired by seashells, Skateboards made from recycled discarded ocean fishnets, NYC’s own bean, and Women in Design 2023!
Photo: Matti Hillig
Pharrell Williams to lead LV
Last month, Louis Vuitton designated Pharrell Williams as Men’s Creative Director. William’s is a true creator, spanning a plethora of disciplines including music, art and fashion. LV’s Chairman and CEO welcomed Pharrell, “I am glad to welcome Pharrell back home, after our collaborations in 2004 and 2008 for Louis Vuitton, as our new Men’s Creative Director. His creative vision beyond fashion will undoubtedly lead Louis Vuitton towards a new and very exciting chapter.”
The artist has won a multitude of awards including Grammy Awards, a Golden Note Award, Producer of the Year, and nominated for a Golden Globe as well as an Emmy. Along with his music and film success he is a true entrepreneur at heart by leading his brands, Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream apparel.
Reebok and Botter team up to unveil 3D Printed Trainers inspired by seashells
In a Collaboration with Reebok and HP, Dutch Brand, Botter has created murex sea snail shell inspired shoes. The colorful and chunky shoes were unveiled at Paris Fashion week. Botter explained, “We ended on the murex seashell as the final design inspiration. We loved that this was an object that the Greek goddess Venus used to comb her hair.” The 3D printed shoes were produced using HP’s Multi Jet Fusion 3D Printer. The aesthetics of the shoe tend to be a morph between Reebok’s football silhouette and Botter’s Baner Shoe. The most impressive feat of the collaboration is that from start to finish the process only took 15 days! The printer used a layer of thermoplastic polyurethane while binding layers of TPU together while also building an internal support when needed. Then the shoes were hand painted to match Botter’s Autumn Winter 2023 collection. HP explained that the Multi Jet Fusion technology allowed for the process to be completed quicker that traditional shoe manufacturing.
Skateboards made from recycled discarded ocean fishnets
Skateboards. This product that has influenced a culture, has been considerably unchanged over the years but seen in different sizes and only a few materials. Until now! Lander Skateboards introduced a completely new aesthetic of board with a new level of performance and also keeping sustainability in mind. The deck consists of an extruded hole pattern that is injection molded from recycled plastic nylon from ocean fish nets with a fiberglass reinforcement. The hole pattern structure is complemented by ribs on the underside that provide extra strength to fight against sagging in between trucks. Lander explained, “In addition to increased traction and acceleration, our unique hole pattern allows the board to flex torsionally… lending itself to quick cuts and effortless carving.”
Lander Co-founder, Ryan Anderson, first prototyped skateboards by welding scraps of perforated steel together. As you could imagine, the skateboard was interesting but difficult to ride. After extensive research and development the team modified the form and function while perfecting the molding process. Lander offers two new models now available, the Rio and the Rodeo.
Finally one for our own! Anish Kapoor, influenced by his own well-known sculpture, Cloud Gate in Chicago, completed his first permanent New York sculpture. The reflective sculpture commonly referred to as The Bean is carefully nested underneath the ‘Jenga Tower’ at 56 Leonard Street. The building also is home to the artist himself! The massive forty-eight feet long and nineteen feet tall sculpture in Tribeca has been under construction since 2019. Weighing in at forty tons, the piece is fabricated from thirty-eight stainless steel panels. During COVID-19 the construction had to be put on pause and even caused the reflective skin to burst due to the sunlight differences. The work allows the surrounding cityscape to be illuminated during the day and night time.
Now moving towards diversity in design! Now in its 7th year, IDSAWomen in Design Deep Dive, is a collection of critical conversations and open discussions led by top industry experts who are actively molding and creating the next generation of designers. The event celebrates the growth of the community as well as a way to gather and help positively influence gender identities within the Industrial Design community.
Our founder, Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman is hosting a session and giving a speech on “Building Highly Effective Design Teams through Inclusion of Diverse Perspectives.” Tune in virtually or in-person at the Chicago-based event on March 29-30, 2023.
The two day event is a great way for experts, professionals, students and others to share perspectives as well as gain insights and foster relationships. This is your chance to be part of the initiative on how we can practice diversity in design more inclusively.
A Q&A with Sustainability Consultant and Educator Frank Millero
A Q&A with Sustainability Consultant and Educator Frank Millero
Spotlight articles shine a light on designers and design materials we admire. Our founder and principal designer Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman has met many wonderful designers in her time in the industry, and in our Spotlight interviews we ask them about their work, their design journey, and what inspires them. In this interview we spoke with Frank Millero, a design and sustainability consultant as well as design educator. He has been helping companies with sustainable initiatives for over twelve years and he has taught a range of design courses at Pratt Institute for nearly twenty.
Frank Millero is on the Board of Directors for SERVV, a nonprofit dedicated to fair and ethical trade, where he works to empower small-scale global artisans and farmers. Trained as an industrial designer at Pratt Institute, he brings his passion for sustainability and his boundless curiosity to all of his projects. We asked Frank about prototyping and designing for sustainability, his history as a design educator, and the future of sustainable design.
Photo courtesy of Frank Millero.
“Everything goes back to that word, ‘value’. What do we value? And how do we use all of these tools to support our values? “
Q: What are you working on that’s interesting to you at the moment?
A: For me teaching is endlessly interesting. I got to teach a design research class last fall and that was a fun opportunity to think about what my research process is in the work that I do. In terms of design work, recently I got to work with a nonprofit called Mayan Hands. They work with weavers in Guatemala to produce textiles. What I really enjoyed about it was that I got to learn what the techniques were and how they were done. I wanted to create something that was really culturally sensitive because they were using a traditional technique, but I didn’t want the project to be necessarily traditional. How do you find that compromise between creating something new but also honoring the tradition?
The good thing was that the weavers were really excited to try new things, so I worked on developing color palettes and designs based on the biogeography of Guatemala. That was a point of departure that made a connection to the land and to the people. It was a fun project in many ways. I got to learn about their textiles, but also about Guatemala.
Q: Could you tell us about one of your favorite projects and share why it is important to you?
A: In Cambodia I worked with the nonprofit SERVV to come up with designs and design ideas. I was there for a month and I got to see how they make things. They were using large, traditional wood looms and they did cut-and-sew. The program was set up to help support women, especially women in farming communities. Part of the year they didn’t have any income from farming and so this provided them with another source of income.
One of the things that we did that was a little bit of a departure from the traditional techniques was creating something that was quick and easy to make. They had some screen printing capacity, so I worked with the director to find local canvas from the market and we used the screen printing techniques that they knew to create tote bags. It was a simple project but it was great because it was a teaching tool for people who were learning to cut and sew simple constructions. It was also really affordable to make and they could make a lot, so it was profitable.
I think the most interesting thing about that project was connecting directly to the people who were making the product and learning about their culture, learning about the way that they were producing things. I knew a lot about the environmental dimension of sustainability but this gave me an opportunity to think about the social dimension of sustainability and to realize how important that was.
Q: What is sustainable design?
A: Sustainable design is a fascinating challenge of creating high value products and services that consider environmental, social, and economic factors throughout the life cycle. I use that phrase ‘high value’. How you define value is important because there are always so many trade-offs when you’re thinking about what impacts there are, what you have to live with, and what you can work towards. It depends on so many different factors.
One of the things I realized when thinking about that word value is that the designers can’t really decide this on their own. It has to be something that’s built into the design brief at the beginning, so that everyone who’s working on the project understands what the values are. Having that discussion early is important. When you get to a point where things conflict and you have to have trade-offs, how do you make those decisions?
Q: How can we design with sustainability in mind?
A: That part is fairly straightforward to me. I think it’s about education and awareness first. Like any aspect of our design process, the more we understand it, the better we can achieve what we’re looking for. Education is also about asking a lot of questions.
When I go to a factory, I try to ask as many questions as I can to find out what they are doing and what they are hoping to improve. What are the best practices in their industry? Certifications are helpful because they help you understand what some of the best practices are, but not all partners will be certified or have the money to be certified. So it’s really important to ask them directly about their practices, and that goes for social practices, too.
Take some of the textile vendors I worked with early on in my career; I would ask them if they had organic cotton and some of them had no idea what that even meant. So you educate them and explain what it means and why it’s important. We would have them create two samples or at least cost out conventional cotton and organic cotton. It was always a bit of a battle with the merchants to say, it’s 20 cents more but this is really worth it. Sometimes it took creating a whole story around it to get people to understand the value and importance of it.
Some people just graduating and entering a job might feel like they don’t have a lot of say in the decision making, but they do have an opportunity to communicate and propose ideas. They can find somebody who’s a mentor within the organization, maybe higher up, who can be an advocate for their ideas. It’s important that you have people at different levels in an organization who are committed to sustainability.
It’s also important to realize that everyone and every organization is going to be at different stages of incorporating these ideas. Wherever you’re at, it’s you need to set goals, figure out how you’re going to measure them, and hold yourself accountable. The more specific they are the better, because then you can measure them in some way, at least qualitatively. But hopefully quantitatively, too.
Q: Could you share some products that you think are good examples of sustainable design?
A: I worked with an organization called Get Paper in Nepal. The products were high quality and they had parts of their business that helped support the other parts. One part was handmade paper and the other part was more conventional paper-making. They produced a lot of packaging.
They got off-cuts from a local T-shirt factory and used that cotton as raw material for their handmade paper. They incorporated artisans in the governance of the organization, and that is a really unusual way to govern your organization. We think of most organizations as top-down, but more and more there are opportunities for people to think about cooperative organizations and new kinds of economic models. I thought this one was great because the artisans were on the decision-making panel. It wasn’t just outsiders coming in and designing things, the product was also coming from the artisans themselves.
They had this cool community program where they would count how much paper they used per year, translate that into trees, go to a local area of degraded land and everyone in the community—the school would be closed for the day, the factory would be closed for the day—would go plant trees.
Over time this helped to increase the water table because without the trees there was a lot of erosion. The community really saw the value in the tree planting because they immediately saw the effect. There are a lot of tree planting programs in the world and I think that they’re great in general, but when it’s directly connected to the community I think it’s even more powerful. It really shows that connection.
Another example: Bill McKibben has an organization called Third Act. This is an organization to activate people who are over 60 to support sustainability projects. His idea was that we have this large population, some of them are starting to retire but they have all of this wisdom and experience. They were also passionate in the 60’s and 70’s about environmental and social causes. He was tapping into that history and also their skills. The idea was that everyone should be involved in this kind of activism. What’s amazing is that they vote, so they have a lot of influence in terms of policy.
Q: When did sustainability become a focus for you as a designer and what inspired that specialization?
A: My background was in biology, and I spent 10 years working as a staff biologist and exhibit developer at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. This was a very important starting point for my career. I feel like I was practicing sustainability in some ways there and I didn’t even know it. The mantra of the museum is, “Here is being created a community museum, dedicated to awareness.”
While I was there I got more and more interested in design. I took design classes at night through UC Berkeley: furniture classes, different kinds of design classes, and also art classes. Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World was really influential for me. There were a few books I read at the time that got me interested in sustainable design, one was The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, and another was Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and Hunter and Amory Lovins. Another really influential book wasBiomimicry by Janine Benyus.
This was all in the late 90’s. And so I thought, Well, you know, I have a biology background. There are all of these interesting opportunities to think about connections, and that’s what led me to Pratt for my graduate program. While I was there, I was interested in looking at the intersection of science and design. I wasn’t focused so much on sustainability but it was an underlying current. Later I was invited to teach a junior studio about sustainable design at Pratt. It was challenging because they told me just a couple of weeks before the class started, and this was one of my first times teaching. It was an early prototype. I got interested in this idea of What tools do students need?What tools do designers need to help them get engaged in this topic and care about it? That was a key starting point for me.
Q: Could you talk about the prototyping process in the context of a sustainable design project? What does sustainable prototyping look like?
A: I think that it’s never too early to prototype and test out your ideas, to test your assumptions. Sometimes at the Exploratorium I would just take a table out, put a microscope on it with a video monitor, go outside and get some pond water, and put it on the microscope and invite people to look at it. I would ask, What do you notice? What’s going on? This was really primitive prototyping to get ideas for the experience.
Keeping people on the same page is also important. I’ve been at organizations where designers say, we’re not going to show it to them yet, because they’re afraid that it’s going to get shut down early. You have to have check-ins along the way, and this is a challenging balance. You want to have some creative freedom, you don’t want to be shut down early, but you do want to make sure that you’re checking in along the way. That’s what prototyping allows you to do: create new directions and be really collaborative.
I think that the prototyping impacts are small compared to large production runs, so I don’t worry too much about it. It’s a good investment, basically. It is important to look at the issues of toxicity, because there are some materials, especially model-making materials, that do have health impacts for the people involved. If you’re ordering the model, you are still responsible for those health impacts, because somebody else could be exposed.
Finding partners who have best practices in the industry, have protection for workers, reduce the amount of exposure…all of those things are really important questions to ask. There are different types of prototypes— looks-like, feels-like, works-like—and you may not need something that’s really beautiful if you’re just creating a works-like prototype. Communicating that to producers might help to see what the alternatives are.
Really simple materials like paper tape and glue are some of my best prototyping tools. There are also opportunities for you to recycle and reuse some of the materials you have. I like to use cardboard, it seems like there’s an endless supply of cardboard from boxes. These kinds of materials can get you to where you want.
Q: What inspired you to become a design educator?
A: I’m the middle child. I have an older sister and a younger brother, so I got to learn from them but also to teach both of them at the same time, and I really enjoyed that. My brother is five years younger than I am, so he was a little kid, and I enjoyed that process of seeing him learn new things
When I was in high school, I had a job at a grocery store as a bag boy, and this was in Miami so it was super hot. I’d have to go out and collect the shopping carts, and I had to wear a tie and mop the floor. And I was making, I don’t know, three dollars an hour. And one of my teachers asked me if I wanted to be a math tutor. I got paid twice as much, I was in the air conditioning, and I got to work with my peers, helping them with math. This was a really exciting experience for me.
When I was in college, I tutored for Upward Bound. I was really inspired by the students because no one in their family had gone to college, and they just needed a little bit of help. They were eager to learn, and to see somebody with that passion for learning was so exciting for me.
At the Exploratorium I had an opportunity to teach people as well. We had three different types of interns; post-college interns, college-age interns, and high school interns. They would all be responsible for teaching each other, and I helped teach all of them. This idea of creating mentorship among the groups was really inspiring to see.
Q: How does your work as an educator inform your consulting work and vice versa?
A: I mentioned already that my experience at SERVV opened my eyes to the social dimension of sustainability. I realized in teaching my class that I was focused a lot on environmental issues but I hadn’t really thought about the social dimension, or intersection of the two. What is environmental justice? What happens when these two forces collide?
My experiences with commercial clients has also taught me so much. I go to visit factories, to work on a team to understand the business side of the retail world – that’s a whole different language. So much to learn there. I used to go to the store and talk to all the salespeople and ask them, What’s selling? What do people like? Why don’t they like it? Getting the vibe from them. When I first started asking them, they were reluctant because they knew that I had designed it and they didn’t want to insult me. But then, over time, after we had a friendship, they would be really honest.
I bring in samples to my classrooms and say, This is what happened, these are the things that could go wrong in production. So here’s different stages of prototyping, and here’s what ended up in the store. I’ve been connected through my work to so many different design professionals, and I invite them into the classroom as well.
Q: How has the conversation around sustainability in design changed over the course of your career?
A: I think for sure there’s been a lot more discussion about sustainability. It was not really talked about so much 30 years ago. More discussion has created more awareness, and there are companies trying to do new things. There’s also some greenwashing that happens, too, because companies don’t want to be shamed for doing bad things. I guess that’s my concern; while it’s being talked about a lot more, you have to be even more vigilant about the trustworthiness of the message.
We also have to look at the bigger picture of consumption patterns. While individual products might be made with safer, better materials, a bigger picture is: what is our culture of consumption? What will happen if we don’t dramatically change this culture? Other countries are modeling their behavior on us in the U.S. and the Western world, and this is troubling to me, too.
Q: What do you see in the future of sustainable design?
A: I hope that it’s a point of inspiration for designers in the future. Up to this point, it’s been this sort of burden, Oh and it has to be sustainable. As if it’s going to squelch your creativity in some way. I think that if designers have a new point of view that sustainable design will give you new ideas and new points of inspiration, then that will be a different kind of attitude shift. That’s what I try to develop in my class as an understanding; that all these products have issues for sure, but we have an opportunity as creative designers and thinkers to come up with new approaches, and that should produce new aesthetics, new opportunities.
I also hope that sustainability is integrated earlier in the design process. People think way too late about these issues, and it’s hard. Things get locked in really early. If it can get more integrated into design briefs earlier on in the process, we’ll have much better outcomes.
I hope that designers can integrate more qualitative or quantitative approaches that can help them in their decision making, like the LCA. You can model something and see how well it achieves its goal. Is this new transportation route better? Well, you can mathematically find that out. It’s not unknowable.
Designers can’t work alone, and corporations can’t work alone. It has to be governments, nonprofit corporations, consumers…everyone has to be involved in this in some way. And I think this is one of the things that’s concerning: some of the messaging is that, Oh, it’s the consumer’s fault because they’re not recycling properly, or whatever it is. Pushing it on people. Why did you buy this fast fashion? Well, I know why: it’s cheap and it’s available. So the practice of blaming people for all of these problems is something that I hope will change as well.
I see some really great opportunities in terms of understanding what environmental and social impacts are by having enough data, using AI and machine-learning, and having somebody in a sense smarter than us analyze the data to find the patterns and trends. These technologies can provide real benefits, they already have in terms of things related to climate change and biodiversity laws.
Everything goes back to that word, value. What do we value? And how do we use all of these tools to support our values?
I like to think about our connection to our history and to cultural heritage. I see young designers being interested in this idea of craft, of connection to their own personal past. What’s special about their local community, or what’s special about their personal history, can be a component of the design process, something that they value. Diverse voices and perspectives being heard in the design process is an aspect of sustainable design as well. It’s an opportunity to have lots of different ideas and perspectives come together to create these solutions.
Design News is your tiny dose of design, technology and other important news, curated monthly by Interwoven Design. In this series we share the latest design news on our favorite topics: Whoop’s 24/7 Health Tracker, the new International Library of Fashion Research in Oslo, Google’s sculpture influence Nest Wifi Pro Router, Anatomic the limited edition 3D knit chair and our very own Perci Emergency Preparedness Vest!
Photo: Aruliden
Whoop’s 24/7 Health Tracker
Since 2013, Whoop has been working on fitness wearables that are designed to be worn 24/7. This is possible by making the product comfortable and durable while also having a device that allows the user to charge their tracker without taking it off. The screenless device communicates heart rate variability, skin temperature, and blood oxygen through a proprietary algorithm. Whoop uses this information to give feedback through an app that works as a fitness and sleep coach. The new Whoop 4.0 strap is 33% smaller than its predecessor along with more accurate and advanced technology.
The International Library of Fashion Research opens this month in Oslo
Oslo’s Stasjonsmesterboligen, or “the Station Master’s House” is the new home to the International Library of Fashion Research. The repurposed building houses more that 5,000 pieces of fashion print that were planned to be discarded. Elise By Olsen, the mind behind the operation, explains how the old train station transformed into the ILFR. The space was not originally built for this purpose and while there are challenges, it all came together when they began thinking of the space as a museum rather than a library. The International Library of Fashion Research will not have anything on permanent display but find a way to bring out requested literature, almost like researching digitally, but in real life.
Google’s sculpture influenced Nest Wifi Pro Router
Google’s Nest Wifi Pro Router is influenced by sculpture and designed to compliment an interior aesthetic. The company, who has been releasing routers for years, has left their comfort zone by experimenting with glossy finishes, smooth textures, and soft forms. Not only has the product launched increased functionality and refined aesthetics, but it is also made of 60% recycled material by weight. The Nest Wifi Pro is connected to Google’s Pixel Products through an established color story. Google offers a recycling program where products can be recycled or refurbished.
Nynke Tynagel, the Dutch artist along with textile pioneers, Byborre and the new label, inCC:, have collaborated to create possibly the most complex 3D knit manufactured ever. The work, Anatomic, is a 3D knit chair that has the visual representation of the inner workings of the human body. This diagram of different textures took 28 development rounds to get the correct combinations of features. These contrasting textures allow the knit to portray biological elements like muscles, nerves, stomach and other organs. Each of the 600 limited edition chairs are manufactured from Dutch oak and recycled polyester. The wooden component that acts as the structural portion of the chair also doubles as a frame when hung on the wall. Anatomic was originally unveiled during Milan Design Week at the Rosanna Orlandi Gallery.
Interwoven Design and INVICTA Ready have paired up to design the Perci Emergency Preparedness Vest. The vest is designed to help families be ready for natural disasters as a quick grab and go tool. The Perci Vest organizes disaster readiness items (safety items, tools, toiletries, first aid, etc.) into 10 uniquely designed pocket locations. It is comfortable, water-repellent, and customizable and works in conjunction with a mobile app that saves all your disaster preparedness plans in one place. A specifically designed series reflective labels create a graphic communications system that indicates what is inside each pocket. A large QR code that connects the Perci Vest with the phone application is found on the interior of the jacket near the waterproof pocket. Interwoven designed and prototyped the functional garment and finalized contents to achieve an easy-to-use, durable and manufacturable product.
Design News is your tiny dose of design, technology and other important news, curated monthly by Interwoven Design. In this issue we take a dive into Checkerspot’s algae based polyurethane, Seratech’s commercialized carbon-neutral cement, Zena Holloway’s bio-designed fashion, Athos 3D printed climbing shoes and Patricia Urquiola breaking the mold in fashion.
Checkerspot Pollinator Kit
Checkerspot launches algae based polyurethane Pollinator Kit
The bio-based material manufacturing company, Checkerspot has officially launched their new Pollinator Kit and it is available for purchase. Instead of using hazardous raw materials for making polyurethane, Checkerspot altered the traditional make up to incorporate an algae base instead of traditional oil. Not only is this product more sustainable but is so high performance that it is used in Wonder Alpine’s snow skis. Checkerspot is targeting designers and makers by putting their Pollinator Kit right right in the hands of people creating objects. Being able to experiment with a sustainable material like algae based polyurethane with an easy barrier to entry is a game changer!
Sam Draper and Barney Shanks, two PhD students from the Imperial College London, recently won the Obel Award for their carbon neutral cement, Seratech. The award is an international recognition of human development through architecture. They commercialized their research, which focuses on replacing a portion of cement with carbon dioxide emitted from factories. Currently, cement accounts for 8% of the world’s carbon emissions. Standard cement gives off stored carbon during its production process, while Seratech focuses on its Carbon Capture Storage (CSS). Not to mention this new formula is easy to scale and low cost. This is a direct result of Seratech’s raw materials consisting of raw materials that are found easily all over the world.
Zena Holloway launches her bio-designed collection, ‘Rootfull’
Multidisciplinary designer, Zena Holloway presented her exploration of grass root grown wearables and sculptures in this year’s London Design Festival. Zena creates a template carved from beeswax and implants the wheatgrass seeds. She uses this template to grow a “botanical skeleton” while sewing, cutting, and manipulating the material while keeping the natural workflow to keep an honest result. The collection, “Rootfull,” features pieces including fashion wearables, a dress, wall hangings and a lamp all consisting of this similar organic texture. These naturally generated pieces promise that the same outcome will never be duplicated, making each piece one of a kind.
ATHOS, a Spanish startup company from Barcelona, has targeted the need for customized 3D printed climbing shoes. The need stems from climbers using shoes 2 to 4 sizes smaller so the fit is as snug as possible. The pain comes second to this fit which is essential for performance. The company uses a phone app to scan a user’s foot and input other information including climbing type, color, etc. The following steps include printing, post processes and assembly. ATHOS takes advantage of a collaboration of technology of Sculpteo and HP’s Jet Fusion Technology. This allows the team to manufacture the printed shoe body easily then assemble the straps and rubber parts. The ATHOS team has recently been recognized for their innovative climbing shoes by being named a runner up for the 2022 James Dyson Award.
Patricia Urquiola releases capsule for Weekend Max Mara
Patricia Urquiola recently left her comfort zone by presenting her fashion capsule for Weekend Max Mara. This collection is dedicated to providing women with casual and informal fashion. Patricia’s past work spans the architectural, industrial and furniture categories, but has never released a fashion line. For this reason, she decided to break the mold and highlight her approach to fashion design. The capsule stems off of her extensive work in textiles and features her unconventional mixture of color. Her capsule entitled, ‘Habito,’ expresses her feeling that the clothing that a woman wears is her emotional habit. Instead of searching for a female silhouette with her design Urquiola focused on oversized, gender neutral elements. The designer explained how important it was to position herself in new situations with new opportunities and perspectives.
Overflowing landfills, giant islands of plastic floating in the ocean, the rise in material culture and consumerism, climate change, and more have alerted us as a planet to the importance of sustainable design. Our actions as individuals, as companies, as municipalities, all impact the health of the environment and the living beings it supports, including humans. What is sustainable design, and how do we incorporate sustainability into design? Fortunately there are a lot of sustainable strategies for designers, and many ways they can minimize and even reverse their impact.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals give an excellent overview of key sustainable impact areas to consider across industries. Image via un.org.
What is sustainable design?
Sustainable design is an approach to design that demonstrates key principles of sustainability, which are mainly concerned with minimizing the depletion of natural resources and increasing product lifespans. There are many strategies for achieving these goals, though any given product labeled as being ‘sustainable’ may feature one, several, or (sadly) none of these strategies.
Sustainable impact is calculated by reviewing the impact of the product in four areas: ecological damage, human health damage, resource depletion, and social impact. Sustainable designers ask themselves what the impacts in these four categories might be at each stage of product development, and how they might be minimized or avoided. They do life cycle assessments to determine those impacts precisely, and to compare the impact of one product to another.
The Product Life Cycle
The product life cycle includes four main stages:
Raw materials: the impact of extracting raw materials
Manufacturing: the impact of manufacturing the product, including material processing, transportation and factory processes
Use: the impact of consumer usage of the product, including the potential duration of use
End of Life: the impact of disposing of the product, including the potential for recycling and material recapture
The product life cycle helps designers calculate potential impacts at each stage. Image via pre-sustainability.com.
You will sometimes see the product life cycle split into 5 or 6 stages but they are all fundamentally the same. Sustainable design looks at each of these stages and reviews the potential for impact in each of the four impact categories above. Does the extraction of the raw materials involve human health damage? Does the use of the product harm the environment? Can the materials be recaptured at the end of life, or do they constitute permanent resource depletion?
This framework aids the designer in decision-making at every stage. While there is always some degree of impact, decisions about what materials to use, the durability and source of those materials, the form and assembly of the product, the manufacturing processes involved, and many more.
The Sustainability Toolbox
Here are some of the key tools in the sustainable design toolbox. This is not a comprehensive list but includes the tools we find especially powerful. You’ll notice that many of them reference and depend on one another, and this is no coincidence. Many of the tools support and facilitate the use of additional tools. While it may not be possible to implement all of them, it is always possible to take advantage of sustainable strategies to participate in responsible design. More and more designers agree that it is irresponsible not to consider these strategies. Many of the decisions that influence social and environmental impacts are controlled in the early design phases of the product, well before it gets to the consumer. This is where we have the most power to make a difference.
Materials & Use
Dematerialization
If you review life cycle assessments, you’ll quickly see an unsurprising pattern emerge: fewer materials means fewer impacts. It’s a pretty reliable guideline. Considering the volume of material needed for a product and making an effort to minimize that volume is a great way to lower its impact. Could your form be streamlined in some way? Play with the structure to learn the smallest amount of material you can use while preserving functionality.
Longevity
Longevity is not only about durability, though this is of course important to allow a product to survive over time. Longevity means that, for whatever reason, people want to keep your product over the course of their lives. They want to treasure it and pass it on to others. Perhaps the product can be repaired or rarely needs to be replaced. Duration of use is an incredibly powerful metric in impact calculations, spreading the impact over decades.
Recyclability
Designing a product to be recyclable is a tricky proposition, in part because the recycling system is limited and varies from one region to another, and in part because it depends highly on being able to isolate component materials at the end of life. It requires thinking about the key materials of the product, how they will be assembled, any adhesives or hardware that may be involved, and whether or not they can be disassembled. While it may not be possible for every element of the design to be recycled, the fraction that can could be improved with thoughtful material and manufacturing choices.
Production Strategies
Disassembly
‘Design for disassembly’ is a popular phrase in the industry at the moment, and for good reason. This design approach creates products that are built to be disassembled at the end of life to facilitate recycling. Many of the hurdles of recycling arise from materials that are theoretically recyclable in isolation but impossible to handle when indefinitely bonded to another material. It can make repair an easier service option for the product as well. Many products, especially those with technological elements, lock the user out upon failure or end of life. Design for disassembly solves this problem of access and empowers the user to maintain and repair the product as needed.
Modularity
Modularity allows a product to be reconfigured to suit the needs of the user. It is tied to longevity, disassembly, repairability, and recyclability. A piece of furniture that is modular is more likely to work in multiple homes across a user’s lifetime. A modular storage system is more likely to have a damaged element replaced than to be discarded altogether. This approach is compatible with a service model of design as well.
Repairability
Objects that can be repaired have an exponentially longer lifespan than those that cannot. Think about clothing and shoes from the turn of the century, products that would serve the user for decades and still be passed on. This strategy is tied to disassembly, longevity, modularity, and service models. It can be achieved through empowering the user to repair the product themselves, or it can be part of a service system that is offered by the producer.
Service Models
Single-use products are a major contributor to landfill waste, and circular systems that allow users to share a product or service give a product a more productive lifespan, serving far more users. Citibike is a great example of a service model, it allows users to borrow bikes when they need them, and users who rarely bike don’t need to purchase a bike they won’t use. That the product stays under company ownership means that they have a lot of control over how the product is maintained over time and disposed of at the end of life. The responsibility for the product is shared between the owner and the user.
Producer + Consumer Responsibility
Stewardship
While warranties are available for certain categories of products, they are rare in commercial goods and very rarely extend to cover the entire lifetime of the product. Increasing producer responsibility is one tool to discourage design for obsolescence or rapid failure. When the producer gets the product back at the end of life, suddenly many opportunities for recycling, repair, material recapture, and re-manufacturing emerge.
Reusability
Products that can be repurposed for alternate uses once their original function has been fulfilled, or perhaps in concurrence with their original function, offer the user versatility and efficiency. Perhaps it is not the entire product but a specific component that has a second or third life after the first. These strategies are often discovered by consumers out of innovation or convenience, like a damaged cup or bowl that can be repurposed for organization and storage, but they can be planned by the designer as well.
Try it!
The strategies don’t stop here but we hope this gives you a taste of what sustainable design can look like. Consider these strategies, and assess their potential for use in your design projects. Assess your own purchases for signs of these tools in use. It can be challenging but it can also trigger great innovations and a fundamentally better design. It is deeply rewarding to create and support sustainable design.
