1
Environmental author and spiritualist farmer Wendell Berry has been long in asking us to forgo mankind's long-standing assumption that what is good for us is good for the planet, and adopt the contrary assumption that what is good for the planet is good for us. With all we know now, who could argue with him? I certainly can't— but I'd like to start off this talk by stating up front I didn't come here to suggest that to become mature and ecologically responsible citizens, we need to begin by doing without. The fact is, recent polls have found that shopping has become more popular than sex, and we find ourselves in a complete reorientation that has moved society from a basis where religion and architecture were the foundation of cultural production and codification, to one dominated by entertainment and consumer products.

2
Neither am I calling for a return to "soft" design employing "natural" materials. Objectively speaking, materials are what they are. There are no natural or artificial ones since in the contemporary environment all of the organic or natural materials have found their functional equivalents in synthetic substances. Why should concrete be thought of as less authentic as stone when in fact we experience fully synthetically processed materials such as paper, as completely natural?

3
As a post-optimal environmentalist, I don't necessarily define environmental responsibility as a reactionary and punitive condition, in fact quite the opposite. I'm asking designers to recognize that the "natural" world is driven by an all commodifying "style engine" fueled by commerce at its most corrupt, and in this 21st century, employ a correspondingly contemporary model of hyperconsumption based on this neo-natural. If we already know that people in developed economies spend about as much on clothes as they do on food, shouldn't we architects and designers acknowledge that our durable hardgoods are thought-of as just as ephemeral as their fashionable softgoods?

4
New advances in materials, design and fabrication techniques, and electronics and software can fuse into unexpected patterns, technological systems more powerful than the sum of their parts. Today these advances in manufacturing and distribution are saving twice as much power than was feasible just five years ago, and that rate of progress has been consistent for the past twenty years— it's really quite promising. Unfortunately, that same rate of progress cannot be seen in the ways that these manufacturing and distribution technologies are employed by most architects and designers in practice, which suggests a reorientation of our fields' established conceptual models of exactly what to design, given these sophisticated systems.

5
We are witnessing the emergence of an ecological project that poses the greatest challenges and the most significant opportunities to the production of architecture and design today. This industrial condition finds its resources for environmental advocacy in the relationship between technology, organization, and labor (all traditional components of the industrial sphere), and the relationship between these long-established elements and the new context of mass culture in the dynamics of media and fashion, and in the creative development of style that embodies the hyperconsumptive spirit of our time. Architecture and design already significantly contribute to today's socially constructed cultures of consumption. It is precisely the artificiality and pointlessness of fashion that makes it valuable as an aesthetic vehicle for fantasy. In examining the engineering of style and the economics of creativity, we can suggest to our public fuller modes of experience and lighter models of living.

6
I don't believe our lifestyles are some evolutionary aberration or anthrocentric abstraction, and as technologies evolve, it becomes clearer that we live within the space between two parallel yet quite symbiotic natural eco-systems. One eco-nomical, and the other eco-logical. These two systems are undergoing a kind of hybridization in which they are beginning to resemble one another more and more. Ubiquitous technologies govern not just simple and discreet controls, but the construction of networks that actually learn to the point of confidently making eerily smart decisions. Our eco-nomic system is beginning to act much like a biological one, where many small parts join together to create a highly adaptive whole, and it's gradually taking hold world-wide as complex systems organize and adapt in co-evolution with their own changing environments. The question for us is, as Kevin Kelley has asked in his book, Out of Control, "how comfortable are we, with the (now-static) world of the made increasingly coming to resemble the (lively and dynamic) world of the born".

7
In my argument for a proactive emphasis of consumption over production, "Natural Capitalist" Paul Hawken more reasonably states it as understanding that ecologically sound opportunities lie within improvements that provide a fuller stream of products and services from a smaller flow of stuff, and that, subsequently can produce more material wealth with less effort, transportation, waste, and cost. Buckminster Fuller called it "ephemeralization"— doing the job with the merest wisps of material, optimally deployed. However, it must be acknowledged that the context of their comments is concerned with changing the overall systems in which products are manufactured, used, and disposed, rather than in changing the composition of products per se. For instance, when my wife and I were consulting with the Solid Waste Division of The Environmental Defense Fund years ago, we helped them devise a wholly new scenario for McDonalds, completely rethinking the actual footprint and flow-plan of their stores in an attempt to model a more efficient configuration in how they stored, prepared, served, and disposed of their meals. Of course we included designing lighter fast-food packaging, but we ascertained that 80% of their waste from their typical restaurant was generated behind the counter. Not surprisingly, they never implemented our more far-reaching plans, which would require more cooperative relationships with their suppliers and waste management providers, but they did change their food packaging— with dramatic results. Following one of our suggestions, they reduced the wall thickness of their drinking straws. Just this seemingly insignificant observation on our part continues to realize the savings of over six tons of plastic annually. That tiny example exemplifies the great impact each of us can make, and the point is that even in something as ridiculously picayune as considering the little cause of a few thousandths of an inch, a great effect can still be realized.

8
Still, it's not enough to bandage existing problems when more systemic changes are called for. We do what we can as consumers, step by step. But as designers, we might take inspiration from the wonderful writer Italo Calvino. In his book, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, he encourages us to reinterpret his six most admired postmodern literary characteristics, as the characteristic post-postmodern objects we could be producing today; an ecology of artifacts embodying traits of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, and consistency.

Selected References

The thoughts here are synthesized from a wide variety of formal readings and informal conversations, and are incorporated for presentation at High Ground July 2000 without attribution.

Hawken and Lovins , Natural Capitailsm: Creating the Next industrial Revolution, 1999
Malossi, The Style Engine: Spectacle, Identity, Design, and Business, 1998
Office of Technology Assessment, Green Products by Design: Choices for a Cleaner Environment, 1992,
Douglas Coupland , Shampoo Planet, 1992
Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, 1988
Ezio Manzini, The Material of Invention: Materials and Design, 1986

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© 2000 High Ground Design. Reprinted from www.2011_highgrounddesign.com