Recently I was talkin with a friend of mine that studies Industrial Design in one of the most famous Universities in Europe in the field, the UDK in Berlin. And while we were talking he explaned to me a very interesting topic, the so clled sustainable or also environmental design. It is all about being environmentally conscious while building new physical obiects.
The theory of the environmental designers is to “eliminate negative environmental impact completely trough skillful, sensitive design” that means that for example only renewable resources are used and that the environmental impact gets minimized.
In the whole life cylcle of a product, the so called life clyle assessment they try to think further then the usual S curve we face traditionally according to the diminishing marginal utility (if you did an undergraduate economics course you know exactly what I mean „wink“-Emoticon. Sustainable design starts with waste prevention in the industry, but also in everyday products.
But environmental design is not only about physical sustainability. It gets even deeper in the work of some very famous Designers that try to create also Empathy and Emotion in a sustainable sense with their products.
When we had this conversation I realized that we really should try to think about our environment in every action we do. And this is even truer when it comes to business, if we sell products, than we should be aware of all the impacts it has. Sometimes very small changes in the production site or in the processing step can have immense impacts.
Thank you Johannes for your inputs, this was a eye-opening experience!
If you want to know more about environmental and sustainable design check out the English Wikipedia article about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_design Howdy!
