The Green Design Paradigm Shift

Today we understand the unintended yet harmful consequences of our industrialized societies upon our earth’s life support systems. This is why we have begun to reconsider the criteria by which we measure beautiful design. The question for today’s design community is, “Can a product truly be beautiful if it is harmful to human health and to nature?”

The modern designers of the twentieth century ignored this question as they sought to demonstrate mankind’s dominion over the natural world. Relying upon new industrial techniques, they advanced their goal of bringing design to "the masses". Environmental respect was not an afterthought in this endeavor. It simply was not even a thought.

Who could blame the modernists?

Who knew fifty years ago that using oil-based plastics, the kind still used for furniture and furnishings such as chairs, plates, shower curtains and toothbrushes, off-gas toxic fumes?

Who knew that the unfettered deforestation relied upon to build our homes and dinner tables would contribute to rising global temperatures, soil erosion, species extinction, and community devastation?

Who knew that oil-fueled automobiles would lead directly to destabilizing climate change?

Who knew that the products intended to increase our quality of life would one day threaten to erode it?

The paradigm shift we are witnessing today is the recognition that how we design matters in a much larger context. It matters to the health of our natural habitat from the food we eat, to the water we drink, to the air we breathe. It directly impacts our ability to maintain and enhance our quality of life.

A new generation of designers is coming to terms with this reality and in the process advancing the new stylistic and theoretical agendas for their respective disciplines. In architecture they strive for LEED certification for their buildings, adhere to the tenets of the U.S. Green Building Council, and recognize that great design reveres form, function and respect for nature. In furniture and interior design, they use Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified sustainably harvested wood. They work with environmentally superior materials like bamboo. They choose fabrics like organic cotton. They internalize the tenets of Cradle to Cradle design and seek its product certification.

It is this greater design awareness that we profile at Vivavi. It is what is evidenced by companies like Patagonia, Nike, GE, Timberland, Herman Miller, and Toyota. Open the pages of Plenty, read Treehugger, MetaEfficient and Inhabitat and subscribe to Ideal Bite, and you’ll encounter twenty-first century designers whose products are relevant to the aesthetic, quality and environmental demands of our contemporary world.

Designers who forsake the environment are anachronisms. They are stuck in the old “modern design” paradigm. They are relics of twentieth century schools of thought that sought dominion over nature in place of balance.

Like with all paradigm shifts, as the new green design paradigm takes hold, these outdated designers will eventually conform to the new principles and embrace them as their own. In the meantime, we can support those who are leading the contemporary green design movement and encourage more in the design community to become mindful of their new roles and responsibilities.

Want to be a Green Designer? Check out these additional resources:

- O2 Network - international network for sustainable design
- DesignGreen - offers green design workshops

Know of more? Send us a comment and we'll add them to the list.

-- Josh