 |
|
Sustaining life on Earth is the shared responsibility of all human beings.
When will design professionals and their clients accept this responsibility?
What of educators? Are they preparing to teach the next generation of designers
about their changing roles? And how can design students learn about working
in an ecologically endangered world?
By Kira L. Gould
November 2002
"Teaching Green" was a deceptively simple title for the Metropolis
conference, held this year at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair
(ICFF), on May 20th, in New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
It was clear from the outset that bringing the idea of sustainability into
design education involves far more than just schools, educators, and students.
The subject touches all aspects of design practice, just as it touches all
aspects of life.
 |
|
|
|
 |
A total of 560 people--282 designers, 227 students, and 51 educators--responded
to a Metropolis survey posted on the magazine's Web site in April 2002. The results were
tabulated by Audience Profiler and were used by facilitator Susan S.
Szenasy to set the tone for the discussion at the conference in May.
Most revealing about the state of green design education today is that 62
percent of design professionals learned about sustainability by whatever
means they could find, including the 18 percent who took continuing-education
courses. The most shocking answer came from the students: though 86 percent
of them expressed an interest in the topic, 69 percent weren't sure how
many sustainable-design courses are required in their schools.
Those students might be in for a surprise when they start looking for jobs
as 75 percent of the surveyed designers said their clients are interested
in sustainable design. There's no lack of interest among design educators
in sustainability either: 92 percent expressed interest but cited barriers--their
own education and school administrators' attitudes--to its integration in
design curriculum.
Teaching Green:
» Full Survey Report |
|
|
|
It was the job of the 26 speakers, panelists, and respondents to focus on
what gets designed today and how the experience of design practices might
inform the education of new designers. They were chosen from such varied
areas as interior design, architecture, and engineering, as well as from
professional organizations and government agencies. There were also educators,
students, developers, and building owners. Missing, as several audience
members pointed out, were industrial designers as well as communication
and graphic designers.
Hillary Brown started off the proceedings by setting the conferees on an
ethical course. Integral to the production of the High Performance Building
Guidelines for New York City's Department of Design & Construction,
Brown, an architect, now runs New Civic Works and teaches at Columbia University.
"We must be accountable, think ecologically and understand what that
responsibility brings to design, and embrace our aesthetic loyalty to nature,"
she challenged the gathered. "We also need to realize that ecology
offers us a model, a sense of the interrelatedness of things and systems,
suggesting a bringing of adjacent disciplines into the integrated design
process."
Brown assessed the sustainable-design movement in the United States as a
plotted "curve of public ideas." These include experimentation,
pilot projects, supporting infrastructure (such as the U.S. Green Building
Council, USGBC), popularization (government guidelines and policy instruments,
including the USGBC's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design [LEED]
rating system), electoral politics (executive orders and ordinances), and
regulations (requiring projects to meet standards).
"Green is in lockstep with good governance," Brown said. "Services
are rendered more effectively and efficiently in green buildings, and
the LEED system speaks the language of the layman. People can readily see
how the LEED principles resonate with their own needs."
But if we are making a headway in policy and principles, when will we see
practicing architects, designers, and academics begin to respond to this
demand? Brown went on to ask other key questions: "How quickly can
the emerging generation and future generations become grounded in the formal,
technical, theoretical, and ethical fundamentals of green? Why doesn't our
collective definition of design excellence automatically include accountability
for environmental performance? What will it take to shift the design culture's
emphasis on object-oriented buildings to those that are more outcome-oriented?
Is there a perception that green design is somewhat anti-aesthetic or anti-intellectual?
How can an ecological approach be made intrinsic to design curricula and
more robustly worked into the studio?"
First, as Brown began to answer her own questions, she suggested that we
teach accountability--cause and effect. "There are environmental implications
to each pencil stroke," she said. "We must design with awareness
about input, output, emissions, embodied energy, and more. By making us
measure and talk about our actions, our green design tools are actually
allowing us to celebrate the improvements. They are good practice, and they
are motivators."
Second, she added, we need to acknowledge the sensuous imperative. "We
are learning that design that responds to bioclimate, topography, and other
factors is more comfortable and efficient. Rather than neutralizing
or controlling nature, the built environment should put us in touch with
it." Brown then suggested that a symbiotic relationship with nature
is perhaps the most pressing emotional and spiritual need of our time.
And third, Brown noted, design is interdisciplinary and it is a participatory
process. "The collaborative nature of sustainable design is one of
its most significant and transformative shifts." She went on to
explain that "the process itself is important, and social capital is
a critical by-product. This represents a shift from the idea that individual
creativity is the purest and noblest act. We are going from egocentric to
ecocentric."
|
|
|
BACK TO TOP
