Sustainable design (also referred to as "green design", "eco-design", or "design for environment") is the art of designing physical objects and the built environment to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. It ranges from the microcosm of designing small objects for everyday use, through to the macrocosm of designing buildings, cities, and the earth's physical surface. It is a growing trend within the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, urban planning, engineering, graphic design, industrial design, interior design and fashion design.
The needed aim of sustainable design is to produce places, products and services in a way that reduces use of non-renewable resources, minimizes environmental impact, and relates people with the natural environment. Sustainable design is often viewed as a necessary tool for achieving sustainability. It is related to the more heavy-industry-focused fields of industrial ecology and green chemistry, sharing tools such as life cycle assessment and life cycle energy analysis to judge the environmental impact or "greenness" of various design choices.
Principles of sustainable design
While the practical application varies among disciplines, some common principles are as follows:
- Low-impact materials: choose non-toxic, sustainably-produced or recycled materials which require little energy to process
- Energy efficiency: use manufacturing processes and produce products which require less energy
- Quality and durability: longer-lasting and better-functioning products will have to be replaced less frequently, reducing the impacts of producing replacements
- Design for reuse and recycling: "Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial 'afterlife'."[1]
- Design Impact Measures for total earth footprint and life-cycle assessment for any resource use are increasingly required and available. Many are complex, but some give a quick and accurate whole earth estimates of impacts. One is estimating any spending as consuming an average economic share of global energy use as 8000btu/$ and CO2 production of .57kgCO2/$ (1995$) from DOE figures. [2]
- Sustainable Design Standards and project retail interior design guides and also increasingly available and vigorously being developed originated by wide array private and organizations and individuas. There is also a large body of new methods emerging from the rapid development of what has become known as 'sustainability science' promoted by a wide variety of educational and governmental institutions.
- Biomimicry: "redesigning industrial systems on biological lines ... enabling the constant reuse of materials in continuous closed cycles..."[3]
- Service substitution: shifting the mode of consumption from personal ownership of products to provision of services which provide similar functions, e.g. from a private automobile to a carsharing service. Such a system promotes minimal resource use per unit of consumption (e.g., per trip driven).[4]
- Renewability: materials should come from nearby (local or bioregional), sustainably-managed renewable sources that can be composted (or fed to livestock) when their usefulness has been exhausted.
- Healthy Buildings: sustainable building design aims to create buildings that are not harmful to their occupants nor to the larger environment. An important emphasis is on indoor environmental quality, especially indoor air quality. [5]
Sustainable architecture
Template:Rellink Sustainable architecture is the design of sustainable buildings. Sustainable architecture attempts to reduce the collective environmental impacts during the production of building components, during the construction process, as well as during the lifecycle of the building (heating, electricity use, carpet cleaning etc) This design practice emphasizes efficiency of heating and cooling systems, alternative energy sources such as passive solar, appropriate building siting, reused or recycled building materials, on-site power generation (solar technology, ground source heat pumps, wind power), rainwater harvesting for gardening and washing, and on-site waste management such as green roofs that filter and control stormwater runoff. Sustainable architects design with sustainable living in mind.[6]
Sustainable landscape architecture
Template:Rellink Sustainable landscape architecture is a category of sustainable design concerned with the planning and design of outdoor space. Design techniques planting trees to shade buildings from the sun or protect them from wind, using local materials, on-site composting and chipping to reduce greenwaste hauling, and also may involve using drought-resistant plantings in arid areas (xeriscaping)and buying stock from local growers to avoid energy use in transportation. guifrhfhvufhgfjhfukucv
Sustainable graphic design
Template:Rellink Sustainable graphic design considers the environmental impacts of graphic design products (such as packaging, printed materials, publications, etc.) throughout a life cycle that includes: raw material; transformation; manufacturing; transportation; use; and disposal. Techniques for sustainable graphic design include: reducing the amount of materials required for production; using paper and materials made with recycled, post-consumer waste; printing with low-VOC inks; and using production and distribution methods that require the least amount of transport.
Other examples of sustainable design
A wind turbine
Agriculture
There are strenuous discussions - among others by the agricultural sector and authorities - if existing pesticide protocols and methods of soil conservation adequately protect topsoil and wildlife. Doubt has risen if these are sustainable, and if agrarian reforms would permit an efficient agriculture with fewer pesticides, therefore reducing the damage to the ecosystem.
Domestic machinery
Automobiles and appliances can be designed for repair and disassembly (for recycling), and constructed from recyclable materials such as steel, aluminum and glass, and renewable materials, such as Zelfo, wood and plastics from natural feedstocks. Careful selection of materials and manufacturing processes can often create products comparable in price and performance to non-sustainable products. Even mild design efforts can greatly increase the sustainable content of manufactured items.
Disposable products
Detergents, newspapers and other disposable items can be designed to decompose, in the presence of air, water and common soil organisms. The current challenge in this area is to design such items in attractive colors, at costs as low as competing items. Since most such items end up in landfills, protected from air and water, the utility of such disposable products is debated.
Terminology
In some countries the term sustainable design is known as Ecodesign, green design or environmental design. Ecodesign as meant by Victor Papanek, did include social design and social aspects. Over the past years the terms sustainable design and design for sustainability - besides other new terms - became more accepted globally, including the triple bottom line (people, planet and profit).
Organizations
- o2 Global Network
- Worldchanging
- Ecolect
- Green Map System
- Keyline Design
- EC3 Global
- United States Green Building Council
- renourish
References
- ↑ Anastas, P. L. and Zimmerman, J. B. (2003). "Through the 12 principles of green engineering". Environmental Science and Technology. March 1. 95-101A.
- ↑ [1] US DOE 20 yr Global Product & Energy Study.
- ↑ Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins (1999). Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. Little, Brown.
- ↑ Ryan, Chris (2006). "Dematerializing Consumption through Service Substitution is a Design Challenge". Journal of Industrial Ecology. 4(1).
- ↑ Levin, Hal (1995). "Building Ecology: An architect's perspective on Healthy Buildings." Proceedings of Healthy Buildings '95. Accessed at Articles on Building Ecology web site.
- ↑ Holm, Ivar (2006). Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial design: How attitudes, orientations, and underlying assumptions shape the built environment. Oslo School of Architecture and Design. ISBN 8254701741.
Template:Ref