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The Metropolis Conference at the ICFF asks, "Are future designers preparing to safeguard our environmental health?"
By Susan S. Szenasy
Editor In Chief
April 2002
When the World Economic Forum (WEF) landed in New York early this February,
everyone was talking about security. One BBC reporter said that there were
two cops for every delegate at the star-studded Waldorf Astoria event. The
news media reported fear of bombings; anticapitalist protests; circling
helicopters; massive traffic jams on the East Side, West Side, and
all around town. Hidden in the International Section of the New York
Times was a short article with a long headline: "Study Puts Finland
First, and U.S. 51st, in Environmental Health," about one of the research
projects presented at the WEF.
The story said that two major American institutions--the Yale Center for
Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia's Center for International Earth
Science Information Network--had collaborated to produce the survey, which
studied 142 countries. Taking the Earth's pulse, it examined 68 different
areas of concern--including water and air pollution, land use, corruption
in government, and global climate change--to measure "the quality of
life over the next generation." To Finland's first place, they
identified the United Arab Emirates as lagging in last place.
The news of the Yale-Columbia collaboration in the service of our health
and survival came at the time we were planning our own forum, "Teaching
Green: Making Sustainability Integral to Every Designer's Education and
Business." We don't expect police escorts or hovering helicopters at
our event on May 20. But we do expect a new or renewed commitment by our
colleges and universities to teach design with much more sensitivity to
our material world. We expect them to turn out designers whose work will
help sustain human life and our environment. Because although we all have
an ethical responsibility to take care of the Earth, designers have a much
larger one: as über-consumers of material goods designers contribute
more to pollution than the average person does.
Just think about how they shop. Whereas in my whole lifetime I will buy
perhaps a dozen chairs, one designer may buy hundreds, perhaps thousands,
in a year. So who has more clout in shaping the market? Yet I wonder whether
designers really understand their power: Are they trained to assess the
materials they use in such large quantities? Yes, they know all about fire
retardancy, cleanability, and wearability; they have learned this in school
and in practice. But these practitioners--like the schools that turn out
the next generation of architects and designers--seem to have been caught
off guard by the environmental movement.
There's a new movement afoot in interior design. A powerful group of practitioners
within the College of Fellows of the International Interior Designers Association
(IIDA) wants to turn things around. They are working to integrate green
design into every American interior-design curriculum. Ready to announce
their program in May, these professionals are determined to leave a positive
legacy to the generations that will build and furnish the twenty-first
century. Perhaps their efforts will eventually make the United States number
one in environmental health. Wouldn't that be something?
»
Learn more about Metropolis's Teaching Green conference.
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