22 CHAPTER 2: Challenges Facing A New Sustainable Aesthetic
thinkable or does not fit into currently socially accepted norms.80 Exhibition teams will continue to design exhibitions based on what is happening within the industry if they feel their own abilities will be questioned by a new design style. Designers are “deeply identified with their products and designs” at times stimulating a level of narcissism.81 Aesthetic dimensions can promote envy among designers because every exhibition is an extension of the designer’s own creativity. A designer will be faced with alternative limitations associated with green design. Designers potentially have to curb their own creativity at times, “learn to protect their self-esteem in the face of criticism, fickle client tastes, a disregarding public”82 and their own personal standards of excellence. “With knowledge comes culpability. The more we know about what we do for a living and the impacts its having, the greater our responsibility is to act on it … Every project you undertake is an opportunity to foment change …” said Sandy Wiggins at the 2008 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo.83 Many exhibition teams and institutions are utilizing green design practices. Many are not. Many see the frictions associated with green design as reasons not to continue exploring new innovations. Some push through the frictions even when met head-on by resistance. With the knowledge why current forms of exhibition design and fabrication are considered environmentally unconscious, is it our responsibility as an industry to reverse these processes to be more responsible? How can individuals and institutions be thinking, supported, and creating action plans to facilitate changes needing to occur? As Jacobsen wrote “… value engineering, entrenched expectations and established ways of doing things erode these [green] intentions. Why? How do we change?”84
80. Cherkasky, Todd. “Design Style: Changing Dominant Design Practice.” Design Issues 20.3 (2004): 32. Print. 81. Hirschhorn, Larry. “Developing and Evaluating Talent in Architecture Firms.” Journal of Architectural Education. 45.4 (1992): 228. Print. 82. Hirschhorn, 228. 83. National Charrette Institute, comp. “Sustainability Immersion: Community Change through Sustainable Design Charrettes.” GB2008 Presentation PL08. Proc. of 2008 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, Boston. U.S. Green Building Council, 2008. Web. 2011. <http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage. aspx?CMSPageID=2156>. 84. Jacobsen, 7.