‘SPACESHIP EARTH’

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SPACESHIP EARTH

• Design for the challenge of sustainability in the
  21st Century
• Ed Gillespie
• Creative Director, FUTERRA

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Introduction

• Spaceship Earth
• Our current situation
• Principles of sustainable design
• Role of the designer
• The challenge

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Spaceship Earth

• Design Science is the effective application of
  the principles of science to the conscious design
  of our total environment in order to help make
  the Earth's finite resources meet the needs of
  all humanity without disrupting the ecological
  processes of the planet

R. Buckminster Fuller
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Sustainable Development

• meeting the needs of the present without
  compromising the ability of future generations to
  meet their own needs (UN)
• Integrating economic, social and environmental
  decision-making
• Treating the world as if we intended to stay

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Sustainable Design

• Have nothing in your houses that you do not know
  to be useful, or believe to be beautiful
• Fit for purpose/function
• Attractive to look at
• Sustainable How produced, how durable, how
  disposed of/reused/recycled?

William Morris
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Our current situation

• Global population
• c.1800 1 billion people
• 1960 3 billion
• Currently 6,377,776,644 (approx. 6.4B)
• Gain 1 billion people every 11 years

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• The question is not How many people can the
  earth support but rather at what quality of
  life?
• Isaac Asimov

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Our current situation (cont.)

• Ecological footprinting
• Area of biologically productive land required to
  meet resource demands, dispose of wastes etc
• UK footprint 5.2 hectares/capita
• UK capacity 1.7 hectares/capita
• US footprint 10.3 hectares/capita
• US capacity 6.7 hectares/capita

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Three Planet Living
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Lifes not fair

• 1 billion people live below the poverty line
• 2 billion lack safe water, 3.1 billion sanitation
• 20 population is in developed world but they are
  responsible for
• 80 of commercial energy use
• 75 of timber
• 50 of fish and grain
• 40 of fresh water

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The Countdown

• By 2050 at current consumption we will need
• 8.5 planets to absorb our carbon dioxide
• 6 planets worth of steel
• 3.5 planets to sustain cement supply
• 3.5 planets to meet current timber demand
• Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

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What gives?!

• Clearly unsustainable
• Global inequalities
• Scale of the challenge
• Managing needs vs wants

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Principles of sustainable design

• Efficiency
• Reduction
• Equity
• Scale
• Sufficiency
• System

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Efficiency

• Disassembly
• Substitution
• Lifecycle thinking
• Dematerialisation
• Durability
• Cascading
• Recycling
• Factor 4

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Examples
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Equity

• Environmental justice
• Fair trade
• Green economics the economics of enough

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Scale

• Interactions
• Schumacher
• Glocalisation
• Sustainable production and consumption

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Sufficiency

• How much is enough?!
• The power of design
• Advertising preys on the weakness of its host,
  creates insatiable hunger leads to debilitating
  over-consumptionin biological terms things of
  this nature are parasites!
• Alan Durning

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Other factors

• Gross National Product (Economists have to learn
  to subtract!)
• Purpose of consumption?
• What is a need?
• Design for sustainability

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System

• Everything is connected!
• Natural cycles are key to sustainable design
• Photosynthesis vs Fossil Fuels
• Functional design vs stylised design
• I think it's a shame that designers are becoming
  more and more fixated on outward appearance and
  degrade themselves into mere stylists'
• Axel Thallemer

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Role of Designer

• Conflict between Eco-design and the mainstream
• Sustainable development information often
  inaccessible, complex and elusive
• Redefining the context of design training
• Current focus on environmental profile/process of
  a product

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Role of Designer (cont.)

• Magnitude of change required
• Small incremental changes to current approach not
  enough
• Integral not add-on
• We cannot solve our problems with the same
  thinking we used when we created them
• Albert Einstein

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Biomimicry
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Case Studies

• Where SUSTAINABLE design becomes GREAT design

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BedZed

• Carbon neutral
• Rainwater harvesting
• Car club
• Green space/high density
• Green roof
• Modern design
• Community

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BayGen

• Wind-up radio
• HIV education
• Solar cell
• Environmental, social and aesthetic aims

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Red Hot Asphalt

• Sun heats tarmac
• High traffic only shades surface 4 hours per day
• Air T 15 degrees C
• Asphalt T 50 degrees C
• Plastic tubing collects warmth for space heating
  in adjacent buildings

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No Shop

• Design installation
• Anti-consumerism campaign
• Nothing on display or for sale
• No shop bags and till receipts with environmental
  information

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Spaceship Earth

• Finite world of finite resources
• Growing pressures and population
• Our responsibility
• The solutions are out there

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Bucky says

• Think of it. We are blessed with technology
  that would be indescribable to our forefathers.
  We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all, to feed
  everybody, clothe everybody, give every human on
  earth a chance. We know now what we could never
  have known beforethat we now have an option for
  all humanity to make it successfully on this
  planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be
  Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay
  race right up to the final moment.

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Spaceship Earth Design for the challenge of
sustainability in the 21st Century