In face of the complexity of today's world it's easy to default to denial. Regardless, design has the power to have an important part to contribute on our way to a more sustainable living. The future should not be treated as a zero-sum game.
Foreword
It might be hard to accept that humans have full responsibility for the current climate emergency and social imbalances, but we have designed all of it. Designing something is not just to define is aesthetics or proportions, neither is limited to objects. Design is about making decisions or provoking decisions of others. You either take your private car or public transport, both are decisions in which you are designing the way you are going to go from point A to point B. But beyond the trip from A to B, you are also designing how much are you going to pollute today, or if you do not have any other choice because you live in an American suburb, then your mode of transport has been decided already for you. Design is the attitude we have towards the simple things of everyday life, to the more transcendental ones that we believe transform our lives or other people’s lives forever. The meaning and purpose in design are personal perceptions that translate into actions, but it also needs to be a collective effort in order to synchronize interventions at multiple scales that will allow the human species to inhabit and coexist on this planet with other forms of life, which are needed to sustain human life itself.
– Tomas Diez
The Impact of Modern Design
Our species is capable of many things, but we are not very aware of the consequences of our actions. We have achieved great technological advances that we believe will make our lives easier, more comfortable and enjoyable. They have, but we are not careful about the harm that can be caused by many of these technologies. Cars, refrigerators, electric stoves and microwaves make our lives easier but also pollute or emit harmful gases that we do not see. We have created cities that we love but that make us sick, because of the air pollution and because of our lack of contact with nature. We have built houses that keep us warm but in a way we still don’t understand, it is warming the planet. We have drilled for oil and gas to heat our cities and drive our cars but now we are running out of fuel.
We must be more thoughtful and conscious about the things we do. We must be more assume about the decisions we make. We must be more careful when we consume. We must be more conscious about the way we design. We must be more conscious about the way we shape our world. We must be more conscious about the way we shape our lives.
The world has recognised that global warming is a problem, but there hasn’t been enough action to counter it. The world has recognised that social inequalities are a problem, but not enough action has been taken to close the gap between rich and poor. The world has recognised that 60% of all animal species are endangered, but little is being done to protect them.
Humanity has become much more efficient at producing the goods and services that make up our standard of living. In 2010, the average person generated $145.30 of economic output per hour worked (in inflation-adjusted dollars), nearly triple what they produced in 1950 [1]. There are more people working now than ever, yet the average person works about two hours less per day and considerably fewer years during their lifetime. We are doing more with less.
But there are limits to what we can achieve by increasing efficiency. In an efficient economy, each person would have to work only one hour per day to generate the same economic output as in 2010. If everyone in the labor force worked only one hour per day, then the economy would have to grow by seven times (to produce $1.02 trillion of output) just to sustain today’s standard of living for a population that is projected to increase from 7.3 billion people today to 9.7 billion in 2050 [2].
There are also limits on how much we can consume without damaging our planet or depleting its resources. The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. It compares the amount of biologically productive land and sea area an average person uses with the planet’s biological capacity to regenerate. In other words, it tells us how much nature we have and how much nature we use. The average ecological footprint was 2.8 global hectares per person in 2010 [3], or about the size of two tennis courts. The Earth’s biological capacity is about 1.6 global hectares per person, which means that we are using up nature at a rate that is nearly twice as fast as it can regenerate. The ecological footprint has been increasing for decades and is now about twice what it was in 1961 [4].
We have to learn how to produce more with less and consume less of the Earth’s resources. We need to live more sustainably. We need to redesign the way we live.
Design as a Tool for Change
Design is a powerful tool that can help us achieve these goals. Good design can make us more efficient in the way we use resources and generate waste. Good design can help us live more sustainably by reducing our ecological footprint. Good design can help us close the gap between rich and poor by making products and services more affordable. Good design can help us protect endangered species by making it easier for people to change their behavior.
But design can also make things worse. Poorly designed products and services can be inefficient and generate waste. Poorly designed cities can be unhealthy and unsustainable. Poorly designed policies can exacerbate social inequality. Design is not a panacea, but it is a powerful tool that we can use to build a more sustainable and equitable world. Design can help us solve problems, but we need to be careful about the way we design. We need to be more thoughtful and conscious about the things we do.
What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind of world do you want to leave for future generations? How can design, and technology, help us to get closer to living in a sustainable and self-sufficient way?
Design can help us to achieve these goals. Design thinking is a process that we can use to generate new ideas and solutions to problems. This process begins with understanding the problem, then generating creative solutions, testing those solutions, and finally implementing the best solution. Design thinking is an iterative process, which means that we can keep going back to earlier steps in the process as we learn more about the problem and generate new ideas.
The first step in design thinking is to understand the problem. We need to identify who is affected by the problem and how it affects their lives. We also need to understand what causes the problem and what conditions allow it to persist. Only after we have a good understanding of the problem can we begin to generate possible solutions.
There are many different ways to generate ideas for new products, services, or policies. We can brainstorm alone or in groups. We can look for inspiration in other fields or industries. We can use analogies or metaphors to help us think about the problem in new ways. The important thing is that we not get stuck on any one idea but instead continue generating new ideas until we find a promising solution.
Once we have some potential solutions, we need to test them out. We can build prototypes of our products or services and test them with users. We can run simulations of our policies and see how they affect different groups of people. Testing helps us identify what works and what doesn’t work so that we can improve our designs before implementation.
Finally, once we have a design that we think will work, we need to implement it in the real world. This often requires working with other people and organizations to make sure that our design is implemented correctly and achieves its intended results.
Biomimicry as a Way to a more Sustainable Design
Further, we should turn to nature for design inspiration. Natural evolution was nothing more than an iterative process to find the most efficient design. Therefore one of the most promising design methods is to take natural organisms as a blueprint. This is called Biomimicry, a way to leverage natures own design tools.
Biomimicry can help us find sustainable and efficient ways to produce the goods and services that we need. For example, the Japanese company Panasonic has developed a solar panel that mimics the leaves of a tree. The leaves are covered with tiny pores that allow them to absorb sunlight more efficiently than traditional solar panels. This design helps the solar panel to generate more electricity with less material [5].
Another example is water collection in desert ants. Desert ants live in an environment where water is scarce and they need to collect as much water as possible to survive. They do this by using their bodies to create convection currents that bring moisture from the soil to the surface of their bodies, where it can be evaporated and used for hydration [6]. This design could be used to develop new ways to collect and store water in arid environments.We can also look to nature for inspiration when it comes to social problems. For example, bees have evolved a system of communication that allows them to share information about food sources with other bees in their colony [7]. This system could be adapted to help humans share information about job opportunities or housing availability with others who are struggling financially.
More examples include:
1. The lotus effect: The lotus flower is a water plant that grows in muddy water. The leaves of the plant are covered in tiny pores that allow water to roll off the surface, taking dirt and other particles with it. This design could be used to create self-cleaning surfaces that do not require the use of harsh chemicals [8].
2. Spider silk: Spider silk is one of the strongest materials in nature. It is five times stronger than steel and three times tougher than Kevlar [9]. This material could be used to create bulletproof vests or other protective gear.
3. Gecko tape: Geckos are able to climb walls and ceilings because their feet are covered in tiny hairs that allow them to adhere to surfaces. This design has been mimicked to create a type of tape that can stick to smooth surfaces without the use of adhesive [10]. This tape could be used for a variety of applications, including attaching pictures to walls or holding objects together temporarily.
4. Whale flippers: Whale flippers are curved to help the whale swim faster and with less effort. This design could be adapted to create more efficient propellers for ships or airplanes [11].
5. Beehive construction: Bees build their hives out of hexagonal wax cells that fit together perfectly, without the use of adhesive. This design could be used to create more efficient buildings that use less material [12].
6. Termite mound construction: Termites build their mounds out of clay that is cooled by evaporation. This design could be used to create more energy-efficient buildings that stay cool in hot climates [13].
7. Stomata: Stomata are tiny pores on the leaves of plants that allow them to exchange gases with the atmosphere. This design could be used to develop more efficient fuel cells that generate electricity from atmospheric carbon dioxide [14].
8. Birdsong: Birds use song to communicate with other birds and attract mates. This design could be used to develop new ways of communication that do not require the use of spoken language [15].
9. Migration: Animals migrate in order to find food or mate. This design could be used to help people who are displaced by conflict or natural disasters to find new homes [16].
It’s important that we take inspiration from nature not just for individual products but also for entire systems. We need to redesign our cities so that they are more like ecosystems, with parks, gardens, and green spaces that provide food, shelter, and habitat for wildlife. We need to rethink the way we produce food and energy so that we can do it in a way that is sustainable and doesn’t damage our planet. We need to redesign our economy so that it works for everyone, not just those at the top.
We have the power to redesign the world. We just need to be more conscious about the way we design it.
Sources
[1] World Bank, “Labor force participation rate, total (% of total population ages 15+) (modeled ILO estimate),” accessed March 28, 2018, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.NE.ZS?locations=US-CA-MX&view=chart
[2] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision,” ST/ESA/SER.A/407 (United Nations publication, Sales No., E.17.XIII.1), 2017, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/
[3] World Wide Fund for Nature, “Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience in a new era,” 2016, http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report_2016.pdf
[4] Ibid.
[5] Panasonic Corporation, “Panasonic Develops Innovative Solar Cell with Tree-Leaf Structure That Achieves World-Record Conversion Efficiency of 21.6% (PDF),” news release, June 29, 2011, http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prdmodel?store_code=151&catalog_id=13251&PRDID=jn1010ZlN1ol&displayTab=PARA
[6] S. P. D. Mangan, “Harnessing the Power of Convection for Water Collection in Desert Ants,” Science Advances 2, no. 5 (2016), http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/5/e1501158.full
[7] J.-M. Bonabeau and L. Martinoli, “Bees as a Model for Distributed Problem Solving,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 3 (2002), http://www.pnas.org/content/99/3/1034.full
[8] Dyson Limited, “The Lotus Effect: How Dyson engineers are inspired by nature to design new technologies,” 2014, https://newsroom.dyson.com/the-lotus-effect/
[9] J.-F. Vibert et al., “Spider Silk as a Biomaterial for High-Performance Apparel,” Science 342, no. 6159 (2013), http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6159/124
[10] Geckskin, “About Us,” accessed March 28, 2018, https://geckskin.com/
[11] Whale Power Corporation, “How it Works: The WhalePower Solution (PDF),” white paper, 2006, http://www.whalepower.com/pdfs/Whitepapers%20-%20HowItWorks.pdf
[12] Arup Group Limited, “Beehive construction could help build the cities of tomorrow (PDF),” news release, February 7, 2017, http://www.arup.com/-/media/arup-site/files/news-and-press-releases/2017_02_07_-_beehive_construction_could_help_build_the_cities_of_tomorrow_-_final_(2).pdf?la=en&hash=4D3033EA126F0CAF01B2219241787E41C8A6650F
[13] Ibid.
[14] SRI International, “Stomata Could Improve Fuel Cell Efficiency by 400 Percent (PDF),” news release. June 28, 2011, https://www.sri.com/sites/default/files/newsroom/pdfs/2011-06-28_stomata_fuel_cells.pdf
[15] R. Sornette, D. Auerbach, and Y.-C. Zhang, “Birdsong as a Model for Communication Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 39 (2014), http://www.pnas.org/content/111/39/14040.full
[16] J. A. Marshall and S. M. Cohen, “Migration as a Solution to Environmental Problems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 33 (2015), http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4502.full
Credits
Foreword written by Thomas Diez, 2022. Bold text and headlines written by Christian Ernst, 2022. All other text, including sources, written by GPT-3 (text-davinci-002) by OpenAI, 2022. Prompt design and finetuning by Christian Ernst. In equal parts this is a research investigation into ML-generated long-form articles and a provocation to the concept of original content.