Sustainable Design
The futures we need are a design challenge. As design challenge, it emphasizes heightened right brain activity, breaking norms, periodic transformation of status quo...It is as such, political.
What Truly Defines Sustainable Design?
So, what does sustainable design mean to you? Discussions/comments here.
Green Design and Organizational Sustainability (New)
By David Fik
In the early 1900s, naturalist John Muir commented, “When you tug at a single thing in nature, you soon find it attached to the rest of the world." No doubt he learned this through his close observation of the natural world. But a hundred years later our connection to the natural world is indirect and blurred. Between 80 to 90% of the typical day of a North American is spent within the ‘built’ environment. Our ‘natural’ world has become an intoxicating mixture of reality TV, videogames, and email messages; and these disconnect us from directly understanding the realities that impact our every thought, word and deed.
(Re-) Think-Feel Sustainability/Sustainable Design (New)
"We can restore our Earth, we can change our ways, and we can build responsibly."
Regenerative Design:
Toward the Re-Integration of Human Systems within Nature (New)
By David Eisenberg
Current practice in green design and building focuses primarily on minimizing damage to the environment and human health, and using resources more efficiently - in effect, just slowing down the degradation. A much more deeply integrated systems approach to the design and construction of buildings and human settlements (and nearly all other human activities) is needed if we are to reverse the degeneration of the earth's natural systems. The challenge is not just technological since it requires altering our assumptions, attitudes, and understanding. It is necessary to move from our current view of humans as standing apart from and using nature to participating and co-evolving with nature.
Creating Sustainable Corporations (New)
by Paul Shrivastava
Corporate industrial activities of the past are environmentally unsustainable. Many of today's environmental crises are rooted in an unsustainable pattern of industrialization. Sustainable economic development can be ushered in only if
corporations, the main economic engines of the future, are made environmentally sound. This can be facilitated through 'total environmental management/ and sustainable organizational design'. Although many companies have embraced the practice of environmental management, few have seriously engaged the idea of sustainability. Those that do might reap competitive and financial benefits.
corporations, the main economic engines of the future, are made environmentally sound. This can be facilitated through 'total environmental management/ and sustainable organizational design'. Although many companies have embraced the practice of environmental management, few have seriously engaged the idea of sustainability. Those that do might reap competitive and financial benefits.
A Model of Design Principles: Bill of Rights for the Planet
A model of the new design principles necessary for sustainability is exemplified by the "Bill of Rights for the Planet" or "Hannover Principles" - developed by William McDonough Architects for EXPO 2000 that was held in Hannover, Germany.
The Bill of Rights:
The Bill of Rights:
- Insist on the right of humanity and nature to co-exist in a healthy, supportive, diverse, and sustainable condition.
- Recognize Interdependence. The elements of human design interact with and depend on the natural world, with broad and diverse implications at every scale. Expand design considerations to recognizing even distant effects.
- Respect relationships between spirit and matter. Consider all aspects of human settlement including community, dwelling, industry, and trade in terms of existing and evolving connections between spiritual and material consciousness.
- Accept responsibility for the consequences of design decisions upon human well-being, the viability of natural systems, and their right to co-exist.
- Create safe objects of long-term value. Do not burden future generations with requirements for maintenance or vigilant administration of potential danger due to the careless creations of products, processes, or standards.
- Eliminate the concept of waste. Evaluate and optimize the full life-cycle of products and processes, to approach the state of natural systems in which there is no waste.
- Rely on natural energy flows. Human designs should, like the living world, derive their creative forces from perpetual solar income. Incorporate this energy efficiently and safely for responsible use.
- Understand the limitations of design. No human creation lasts forever and design does not solve all problems. Those who create and plan should practice humility in the face of nature. Treat nature as a model and mentor, not an inconvenience to be evaded or controlled.
- Seek constant improvement by the sharing of knowledge. Encourage direct and open communication between colleagues, patrons, manufacturers and users to link long term sustainable considerations with ethical responsibility, and re-establish the integral relationship between natural processes and human activity. (More Here)
Embedding Sustainability in Organizational Culture:
Framework and Best Practices
By Network for Business Sustainability
Many business leaders recognize that the true value of sustainability is realized only when sustainability is embedded into their organizations’ cultures. The ability to identify opportunities and innovate new processes requires that every internal stakeholder understand sustainability and practice it. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports often describe sustainability as “part of our DNA” or “the way we do business”; however, business leaders lack a clear framework for systematically embedding sustainability into organizational culture.
Sustainable Organization Design Principles
By Dirk Sampselle
This paper lays a framework for designing an organization that will take advantage of strategic sustainability or corporate social responsibility opportunities, and implement sustainable and socially responsible practices throughout its own infrastructure and supply chain.
A Natural Balance: Interior Design, Humans, and Sustainability
By Linda Sorrento
No society has ever yet, been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation. We have to create something new, something that’s never existed on the world before. We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish as it is something that is fragile, that’s the only one, that’s all we have. And, we have to set up a system that’s sufficiently complex, to continue to monitor the whole. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.
Natural Design and Human Development: Waskom's Paradigm of Wholeness
By Norman S. Rose
If design and development are one, we owe it to ourselves, our children, indeed the entire cosmos, to find the path that ensures a life progression of ever-increasing wisdom, enjoyment, and maturity. The paradigm of Natural Design is not the path itself, but it is a new light that reveals the path more clearly. And after all, isn't it light that we ultimately need to find our way?
