Stumble Upon Sustainability

Who would have known that my favorite past time is a step toward sustainable design? As I mentioned in the introduction to my blog, I love refurbishing and repurposing furniture!! I absolutely love going to consignment furniture stores, auctions, garage sales, and even searching Craig’s List to find my next big project.  It’s a wonderful feeling to find an old piece of furniture and then transform it into something extraordinary!

For those of you who are uncertain what sustainable design consists of, here is a little overview.  Before starting my sustainability course, I assumed sustainability could only be practiced on a large scale, starting with the major industries.  I was completely wrong.   As mentioned in Fashioning Sustainability  Forum for the Future, contributing to sustainability can be as small as washing your clothes in cold water and using an energy efficient machine, or as big as substituting hemp for cotton in the production process.  Did you know hemp has superior qualities to cotton, such as it is four times stronger, twice as resistant to abrasion, less resistant to mildew, soiling, shrinkage, and fading?  Unlike cotton, which requires ample amounts of water and pesticides, hemp requires a tremendously smaller amount of water and pesticides, which can be harmful to the worker harvesting the crop.  After reading many articles on sustainability I have come to realize there are many different definitions for sustainable development.  From what I have gathered, sustainable design consist of developing a long lasting product while considering all environmental and economic conditions, that will satisfy current and future generations.  I highly agree with the book, The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability by Ann Thorpe, which states, “The individual choices we make about how to pursue sustainable design will be based on personal situation, skill, and temperament (Thorpe 17).”  People of all ages and different career fields can achieve sustainability.  

My focus is going to be more driven toward the current initiatives of sustainable interior design.  After reading the journal article Sustainable Solution by Tara Mastrelli, I have come to realize that sustainable design can solve more than one environmental issue.  The article addresses the issue that over 70,000 square miles of forest in the Rocky Mountains have been deteriorating for the past ten years due to infestation of the Mountain Pine Beetle.  The beetles are causing a major problem, because trees are falling in the middle of roads, and utility lines are being damaged.  A man by the name of Lary Lipson, managing director of Greeno, (a sustainable building products company) noticed these trees had a very unique blue-silver coloring, and did not want to see the trees destroyed.  He researched the trees, and found the blue-silver wood was just as strong as traditional lumber. He later marketed the wood as bluestain lumber, and produced flooring, wainscoting, and decorative trim.  Lary Lipson also employed many local residents to make this possible, which helped out the community.  His current initiative is to incorporate the bluestain pine in all the resorts located in the Rocky Mountains.  Lipson stated that a new line of bluestain furniture and accessories might be in his future.  This one initiative toward sustainability helped in many different aspects, by improving the habitats for both plants and wildlife, bettering the community by producing more jobs, and decreasing the use of man made materials for building.  The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability states that a purist strives for 100% sustainability, and I believe Lary Lipson’s efforts could be classified as purely sustainable. 

http://www.rtsfurnituredesign.com/inspiro-beetle-kill-furniture.html

The article Sustainable Design, by Alan Liddle, mentions a few more ways to achieve a sustainable interior design, such as Faux-linoleum floor made from sawdust, linseed oil, rosin, jute fiber and limestone.  It also talks about a wood substitute made from coconut shells and resin panels embedded with banana fibers for added texture and color.  There is an unlimited amount of options when it comes to choosing sustainable interior aesthetics.   

Sustainable design is not only used in interior design.  It can be used in many other fields as well.  People just have to find their own personal way to incorporate to sustainability. As mentioned in Shifting the New Dominant Social Paradigm in the Apparel Industry: Acknowledging the Pink Elephant by Cosette M. Armstrong, there are specific sustainable design approaches that industries can participate in and here are a few examples and descriptions.  

Design for Environment and Design for X 

• http://www.carboun.com/sustainable-development/sustainable-design/dubai-experiments-with-sustainable-development/
• An approach that seeks sustainability while retaining competitiveness

Cradle to Cradle

• Celebrate diversity, use solar income, and waste equals food
• http://giroflex.filepool.ch/eyebasealbum.data/dokumente/1024/45/00035152_m.pdf

Product Service Systems

• Replace material consumption with service
• http://www.unep.fr/scp/design/pss.htm

Emotionally Durable Design

• Designing for attachment or an emotional need
• http://www.unep.fr/scp/design/pss.htm

Slow Design 

• Design no longer controlled by time
• http://www.slowlab.net/CtC_SlowDesignPrinciples.pdf

Design Activism 

• Designers inspired by personal issues 
• http://designactivism.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Thorpe-definingdesignactivism.pdf