In his introduction to Design Education for a Sustainable Future, published recently by Routledge/earthscan, Rob Fleming says his premise “is remarkably simple. It is based on a series of straightforward questions that seek to uncover the context, values, and behaviors necessary for effective twenty-first century design education. Is society moving towards a new sustainable or integral worldview, a new set of cultural values that are reshaping the very fabric of human existence? If so, how are such profound shifts in consciousness impacting the design and construction industries? And how can design educators better reflect the zeitgeist of the new century by moving from well-intentioned but lightweight ‘greening’ to the deeper and more impactful ideals of sustainability and resilience?

“The process of answering these questions begins with the requisite historical narrative which explores cultural evolution not as a slow and gradual rise to new levels of complexity but rather through a series of hyper-accelerated jumps in human consciousness. The jump from dispersed Hunter Gatherer cultures to centralized agrarian societies and then to industrialized nations correlates well to the convergence of new energy sources and the invention of new communication technologies.” What follows is Fleming’s opening salvo to a much talked about, much-overdue shift that needs to take place in design education:

Jeremy Rifkin argues in his book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis that “The convergence of energy and communications revolutions not only reconfigures society and social roles and relationships but also human consciousness itself.”¹ The early twenty-first century, as characterized by unprecedented sharing of information via wireless networks and by the emergence of renewable energy technologies, demarcates a threshold from one world view to another, a jump from an industrialized conception of nature as immutable and infinite to a Gaia inspired view of nature as alive, intelligent and, most of all, fragile in the hands of man.

The principles of sustainability, which emphasize ecological regeneration and co-creative processes, comprise a new and powerful ideal that is reshaping technologically driven initiatives, especially those associated with the design and construction of the built environment. Societal conceptions of money and profit, consumerism, design and technology are radically shifting to address the superficial but useful demands of “greening,” and are leading to finding deeper and more impactful processes to meet the much higher bar of sustainability. Read more…

On a flight into Phoenix I was thinking of light as a metaphor for ideas. I thought of the city lights as a field of minds in a network of shared ideas. As I found my way to Taliesin West in northeast Scottsdale, memories ebbed and flowed with the illumination of the roads that, at each turn, gave way to an experience that embedded itself in my personal map of this metropolitan area in the Arizona desert.

There is always a moment before reaching Taliesin West at night where city lights disappear. Suddenly suspended in the darkness of the desert, I turned on my inner light—my knowledge of the place that has been embedded in my memory through living at the camp where Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered the principles of Organic Architecture. Slowly, the camp reveals itself through deliberate lighting, as ideas to be contemplated. I walked through this silent masterpiece, listening to the old ideas and observing the potential ones to come from Minding Design, a symposium on neuroscience, design education, and the imagination.

Last November the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and School of Architecture hosted this full day symposium, bringing together the ideas and research of architects and neuroscientists in a series of presentations and panel discussions. Juhani Pallasmaa, Michael Arbib, Jeanne Gang, and Ian McGilchrist were the keynote speakers in a dialogue that explored the opportunities of cross-pollination between architecture and neuroscience. The range of discussions was impressive and left my mind saturated with seeds of light/ideas and questions to contemplate and assimilate into my own design process.

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I’m trying to remember, did I ever think about things like public design, civic planning, or product innovation in the eighth grade?  I’ll be honest, the eighth grade wasn’t all that long ago. I know that in language arts we mapped sentences; we learned about Julius Caesar’s murderous frenemies in Latin class. But the real-world work of designers—isolating problems, then drafting, tweaking and prototyping solutions—I don’t remember that being part of our curriculum. Lately, however, design practice, with its inherent capacity for invention, community engagement and change, is finding new relevance in K-12 classrooms.

Young designers are encouraged by institutions to participate in solving social and environmental problems. The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Ford Motor Co. Fund, for instance announced, just last week, the winners of their Community Design Competition.  The competition challenged students to locate opportunities for improvement within their communities, and then brainstorm solutions.  Open to schools in Miami, Chicago, San Antonio and San Diego, the competition is part of the Smithsonian and Cooper-Hewitt’s ongoing promotion of design as valuable, educative practice for young people.  The entries attest to the creativity, enthusiasm, and thoughtfulness with which the students approached their communities’ needs.

First-place glory and $5,000 was awarded to the Henry Ford Academy: Alameda School of Art + Design in San Antonio. The 9^th-grade students designed a backpack specifically tailored to the needs of the homeless, inspired by their neighbors at the Haven 4 Hope Transition Shelter only a block from their school.

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“We are nature.” So goes the new mantra in some design circles. And the word “biomimicry” comes up with increasing frequency. When we heard that Jane Fulton Suri, a partner and creative director at IDEO and author Thoughtless Acts? Observations on Intuitive Design, is working to reconcile nature with design, we couldn’t resist asking her a few questions.  She comes to design from psychology and architecture, as a pioneer in empathic observation and human-centered design she encourages us to be curious about everyday human behavior. At a time when designers are starting to tackle complex and systemic challenges, Jane is looking beyond human behavior, exploring how the exquisite patterns in nature and sustainable living systems might inform and inspire us to create more elegant and less harmful solutions.

Susan S. Szenasy: The refrain we hear often today goes like this: “We are nature.” Architects say it, designers say it, so do biologists, and others. How can we begin to understand this belonging, when our species has spent a century separating ourselves from nature? Can you give us some practical advice, something hopeful about how we reconnect in this age of electronic overkill?

Jane Fulton Suri: I wonder if the refrain “we are nature” is really all that common among architects and designers today. Read more…

Each year the Fulbright Program offers grants to 1,700 Americans to study, teach English, or conduct research.  This year, the design world has much to look forward to. Earning the title of most highly represented specialized institution of 2010, seven students holding bachelors and masters degrees from Rhode Island School of Design have been chosen to study design from a number of global perspectives.

The surpassing of such institutions as Julliard and the New England Conservancy of Music by RISD in the number of Fulbright grantees is exciting for the design world. Read more…