RAW. Miles Taylor & Maria Camila Misles

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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y, D E S I G N A N D E T H I C S IN A CONNECTED WORLD

A B O U T

T H E

O B J E C T

The concept of RAW was born thinking about the extraction, creation and end life of a product. The very material it’s made from, was salvaged from a tree (A Golden Ash) in Miles’ backyard that died and was later cut down. He collected the timber, hoping to use it one day, and this proved to be the perfect opportunity. We know the exact location of where this tree was felled and we are transparent in the entire process of RAW’s creation. (Hand tools only!)

The fact that it has been saved from a potential end as wood chips or even landfill creates emphasis on the lifecycle and extending objects lives in various ways instead of letting it become a victim of our consumerist society. If the time does come where RAW becomes “waste” it will simply degrade back into the environment doing no harm due to the nature of it being all timber, finished with raw linseed oil. The revaluing of the tree and the circular aspect of RAW, (in terms of its extraction, creation and eventual disposal) engages the spiritual dimension and evokes a sense of intrigue as to why RAW is designed the way it is, therefore raising awareness to the fast paced throw away society of today.

We hope to let people step back from their lives, relax, reflect and consider their doings and actions within our home, Planet Earth.

MILES TAYLOR AND MARIA CAMILA MISLE

contents 7 INTRODUCTION 11

SYSTEMS THINKING

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TRANSITION DESIGN

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HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN

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CRADLE TO CRADLE

29 CONCLUSION 33

PERSONAL REFLECTION

37 REFERENCES



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introduction

Above RAW: ncense burner holder, ash collector and incense storage.

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INTRODUCTION The spiritual perspective of sustainability is an everyday awareness and practice of inner, societal and environmental wellbeing. It is directly linked with “planetary care� and transformation that supports inner development and spiritual growth (Walker, 2014).

In design, frameworks such as human centered design, transitional design and systems thinking all fall under the spiritual perspective of sustainability by creating awareness of the interconnectivity of elements within a system and the understanding of how one can impact another. When sustainably creating an object, ethics is the key component. As designers it is our role to educate consumers on the truth and the story behind the extraction of materials and the afterlife of products, and build and create objects that involve the spiritual dimension.

Our current generation is extremely unconscious and likes to stay in their comfort zone. We tend to look for what is cheap and what is accessible, not thinking where the object comes from, when we buy it or how and by whom it was made. We are used to having everything we want, whenever we want it and we are too quick to waste. We never stop to think about the story behind it. This has become a social justice problem because most of the time the ones that get hit worse and first are not wealthy people but poor communities with low income. This issue obviously also degrades the environment with catastrophic consequences.Therefore for this reason we decided to create RAW. Our object, RAW, is connected to the idea of respecting the life cycle of everything that surrounds us and the importance behind the lifetime of each component that a product has. RAW gives the same admirance to every single aspect and material it is made of. The purpose in making it was to create awareness and appreciation. We created an incense holder that is to us, a very close and personal, representation of an actual life cycle. As time goes by, the life of the incense does too. Another important aspect of RAW is how its existence causes no harm to the planet or to the people. It brings peace and mindfulness, among many other pleasant feelings.

introduction

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systems thinking

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SYSTEMS THINKING Currently there are multiple actions being taken to help resolve issues surrounding the environmental justice caused by the hyper-consumerist society that we live in. Systems thinking is one of the biggest attempts to resolve these problems.

Like Peter Senge states, “Systems thinking is a context for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots” (Senge, 2018). System thinking is designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways. As designers should actively consider the particular dynamics of existing systems. Design is a perfect example of a destructive system failure.

The idea of intentionally designing things to have reduced value, break or be wasted and not thinking in the cycles of disposability that this creates and the millions of other systems that it affects clearly shows that ‘design’ itself is a system that needs immediate intervention. If we, as designers, start to think and identify these design flaws and the impact they have on the planet, then we can start designing new systems that make the old disposability-focused approach obsolete. In other words, products have a life on its own, we must analyse all of the possible paths that the product can take before we actually give the ‘thing’ a life of its own.

Previous page Circular Economy. (2019). [Image].

Retrieved from https://www.seattlemade.org/circular-economy/

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TRANSITION DESIGN Transition design on the other hand is a branch of the system thinking philosophy that brings together two key ideas: a) society must transition towards a more sustainable future and b) that this transition will need for intentional, system-level change and wicked* problems solutions. Changes in one area of a system in a wicked problem always ramifies in unpredictable ways and because

*A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.

systems are intangible and invisible, we don't understand them, but these unknown systems still create their own behavioral patterns overtime. As a result, transition design was introduced. Transition design is a branch of design that aims to strategically control and shift the unpredictable ways that these wicked problems ramify into. If we understand how this transitions happened in the past then we can study how they will happen in the future and therefore design accordingly. Transition design strategically places design interventions that have the potential to shift entire socio-economic technical systems over time (towards more sustainable futures) (Irwin 2015).

Left Handcrafted storage for the incense sticks Opposite The beautiful Golden Ash tree before it was felled once it died

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human centered design

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HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN As designers we have the power to propose new ways of doing things and that is why we design for behavioral change. Human centered design has always different purposes (intended to have positive outcomes) yet often those outcomes turn to be quite negative even though it is intended to be for the social benefit. These negative outcomes are the result of determinism which implies a one way process in which the physical environment is the independent, and the human behavior the dependent variable (often the assumption in behavioral design which is wrong because it is always a two way process). People not always use things the way we expect. “All designs are predictions. All predictions are wrong” (Brand, 1994). People use products in ways that the designers never intended. For that reason he states that as designers we need to be designing with people rather than for people. Designing with people for behavioral change means understanding people’s lives (how interact with systems). In other words, that we need to understand what people are trying to do and as designers help them make it better.

An issue that is located within our current waste disposal system is the recycling of e-waste (electronic waste) in third world countries. Many things are not considered by recyclers in our own countries and countries where the waste is sent too. In West Africa, a waste dump houses all sorts of e-waste, from television screens, to mobile phones, laptops and microwave ovens. The locals scavenge for precious metals like copper, silver and gold, often ignoring health hazards like deadly carbon monoxide levels, toxic heavy metals and other carcinogenic chemicals. The process they use in extracting materials usually resorts to burning insulation from wires, or melting metals in makeshift furnaces. This is clearly not ethical in many ways, our waste should not have to end up in Africa, and the people there shouldn't be left to deal with it. The solution of stopping export of used electronics from our wealthy developing countries will not resolve the problem at hand. A different resolution must come from West Africa itself and the people who rely on e-waste to make a living. It is our waste, therefore our problem (Minter, 2016).

One of the authors that is aware of the issue in human centered design is Yoko Akama. In her text, “A ‘Way of Being’ in Design: Zen and the Art of Being a Human-Centered Practitioner” she offers an alternative framework for humancentered design based on the Japanese ethical concept and the idea of what it means to be human. She discusses the relationship between being ethical and being a human-centered designer and therefore critiques the common notions of human-centered design that emphasise ergonomic, 'human-factors' as well as the “‘do-gooder'" disposition that is associated with humanitarian design.

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Above Details of RAW

She instead believes that one has to first develop a sense of self awareness and recognition because a “person’s inner recognition and perception is equally as important as their outer senses and intellect” and that “the practice of practicing design and continuous reflection upon its ‘a way of being’ - is a process of evolution, enabling a greater understanding and connection to the pole and the world we live in” (Akama, 2018).

A clear example of an unethical production process is the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse. On 24 April 2013 in the Dhaka District in Bangladesh the building completely collapsed due to the lack of maintenance. Approximately 1,134 died and 2,500 where injured. The factories housed by the building manufactured apparel for brands including Benetton, the Children’s Place, El Corte Inglés,

"There is no complexity to its nature. It is simply a transparent object with a meaningful way of existing and creating a nurturing purpose to us as the designers."

Mango, Primark and Walmart. The building's owners ignored warnings to avoid using the building after cracks had appeared. The decision to send workers back into the factories was “due to the pressure to complete orders on time, putting partial responsibility for the disaster on the short production deadlines preferred by buyers due to the quick changes of designs, referred to as fast fashion” (Westerman, 2017). As a result of this disaster, companies such as Nike, Patagonia, Columbia, the Walt Disney Co and H&M decided to join the transparency pledge and therefore published names and addresses of their supplier factories. Nevertheless there are currently thousands more workers still labour in subcontracting workshops under unknown conditions. This example clearly shows how powerful as designers and consumers our decisions are. In the end, we are the ones that demand such cheap products and since everything is based on demand-driven manufacture, we are the ones that are supporting such unethical production processes in the world. RAW, in the other hand, does not contain a long history behind it like the example mentioned above. It is what it is that we are presenting to the public eye. There is no complexity to its nature.

It is simply a transparent object with a meaningful way of existing and creating a nurturing purpose to us as the designers.

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“the practice of practicing design and continuous reflection upon its ‘a way of being’ - is a process of evolution, enabling a greater understanding and connection to the pole and the world we live in” - akama, 2018

human centered design

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cradle to cradle

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CRADLE TO CRADLE Another designer that works under the system thinking umbrella is William McDonough. He is a leader in the design thinking process and therefore considers everything from molecular to global level in his designs. With his framework and philosophy: “Cradle to Cradle,” he proposes a new way of thinking: circular thinking, where waste becomes a new material, a new impute that we can put back into the process; to use what we already have in the system instead of extracting more (McDonough, 2002). In terms of relating the ‘cradle to cradle’ concept to the spiritual dimension, the philosophies of slowing down and re-thinking are heavily involved. In the incredibly fast-paced world of today, many things get lost and under valued in our lives. It is critical that we begin to revalue items that could be disposed of and thinking of them as an asset instead of a liability. ‘Cradle to cradle’ relates the lifetime of a product to reincarnation, where objects and reused and what is considered as waste is now valuable material to make another item. This closed loop thinking, or circular economy, makes for a sustainable future. Items can be reused again, and if it cannot be, it could be transformed into another object or left to degrade into the earth with a neutral effect. This thinking will better the world and make it a better place and ensure that the future of civilization is sustainable and neutral to the environment and people of our Earth.

Like the “Cradle to Cradle” framework, the triple bottom line is another sustainability framework that examines a company’s social, environment, and economic impact. Success or failure on sustainability goals cannot be measured only in terms of profit and loss but must also be measured in terms of the wellbeing of people and the health of our planet. Every time we hear the word “sustainability” we only think about the environment and the natural resources but forget that it also encompasses society and economy. There has to be a balance in the three aspects for something to be truly ethical and sustainable.

“Every piece of design encodes a hypothesis about human behavior” (Adam Greenfield). Design encompasses more factors and systems that we could ever imagine. As designers we think we have the power of solving problems (and we might be able to). The problem is that we don’t take into account all of the systems and factors that could be affected by design. Humans are complex, the environment is complex and we designers are supposed to be designing for the complex systems. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Design has become the world. (Colomina, 2016)

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C O N C L U S I O N Design is a creative activity of choosing between different paths and possibilities. An activity where designers have to adopt some criteria for choice based on ‘what, in their view, is better to do’, ‘what is good and bad, right and wrong’. We should design for sustainable wellbeing: which is designing for a near future, where we will have to learn to live consuming fewer environmental resources while improving the quality of our lives.

We need to think on better alternatives rather than stay on the traditional way of thinking and constructing. We need a new story to tell, one that reconnects cities with nature (where resources come from). That re-connection is unavoidable for a resiliency. There has to be transformation to a clear understanding of what is the built and what is the natural world. To understand and accept that cities and objects are a part of nature too.

Designers should always include an ethical dimension into the design decision process. It is our role to understand that when it comes to ethics, the real project is less about presentation, and more about practice. In terms of our object, our aim was to make our extraction, our production and our disposal processes entirely transparent.

We have gone through a complete systematic procedure while designing RAW. We want to be able to follow the new approach of what we call humanity centered design, which is a combination of systems thinkings, transitional design, human centred design and spirituality all working together to create RAW.

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personal reflection

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R E F L E C T I O N Creating our object RAW has been an enjoyable and exciting journey, from generating ideas, to writing the essay and making a booklet, I really felt meaning and a connection to this piece that I never really found from standard Industrial Design projects. The course challenged me to think deeper and question further what we are doing as a society and continue to examine with a critical eye, the actions now, and consequences in the future that will endure from our doings today.

Coming from the humblest of origins, RAW was designed around the process of a lifecycle, the birth, the life and the death of an object. These motifs can be seen in its very design, within the bark left on the tree, the smooth timber, and the ash it generates from the fallen incense; they all work together to display the lifecycle of a product within the object itself. We hope that this will encourage people to analyse where they are purchasing items from, where they are extracted from, made and eventually disposed of in our current society. People must spiritually connect with objects to find extensive value in them, therefore prolonging the life of a product or saving one from doom; the landfill. We do have a responsibility for coming generations to create resolutions for a more sustainable future.

Although RAW may not hold the solution to the current humanitarian crisis we are in the midst of, it does seek to engage people and provide them with awareness and hope for a future free of greed, unethical behaviour and hyper consumerism. Ultimately, RAW acts as a bright light in our unsustainable world and seeks to generate appreciation for those who truly care about our home, Planet Earth.

MILES TAYLOR

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“A ‘WAY OF BEING’ IN DESIGN: ZEN AND THE ART OF BEING A HUMANCENTERED PRACTITIONER”

BY YOKO AKAMA “About Transition

Design.” Transition

Design

Seminar CMU

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transitiondesign.net/.

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Ceschin, F., Gaziulusoy, I., 2016. Evolution of design for sustainability: from product design to design for system innovations and transitions. Des. Stud.

47, 118-163. http://bit.ly/2OHqqEy Closing the loop - A Documentary Film About the Circular Economy Revolution. Stand Up 8 Productions (Film’s webpage - http://bit.ly/2MjRi0s) (2018). The film is available here - http://bit.ly/2wbtReV Colomina, Beatriz, and Mark Wigley. Are We Human?: Notes on an Archaeology of Design. Lars Mull̈ er, 2016.

Dr Dan Lockton: ‘Understanding Understanding’ in Design for Behaviour Change. (2015) (video) http://bit.ly/2MoOgZ2 John Thackara - Thinking Like A Forest: A Design Agenda for Bioregions.

SVA. 2015 (video) http://bit.ly/2BEF8u8 Margolin, V. (1995). The Politics of the Artificial [Ebook] (pp. 349-356). New York: The MIT Press. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1576217 Minter, Adam. “The Burning Truth Behind an E-Waste Dump in Africa.”

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Walker, Stuart. Designing Sustainability : Making Radical Changes in a Material World, Routledge, 2014.

Westerman, Ashley. “4 Years After Rana Plaza Tragedy, What's Changed For Bangladeshi Garment Workers?” NPR, NPR, 30 Apr. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/30/525858799/4-years-afterrana-plaza-tragedy-whats-changed-for-bangladeshi-garment-workers.

William

McDonough

Keynote

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SXSWECO

(2016)

(video)

http://bit.ly/2g0TZQA All images without references are personal and were taken by us.

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