Questions concerning sustainable design are, and will remain, central to the design field for a long time to come . In posing such questions, it also becomes clear that there are certain questions on which we often tend to focus, while others often remain diffuse or unspoken; not infrequently questions that relate to the actual foundations of the design field rather than the problems we are trying to solve .
It is difficult to clearly explain something that cannot be seen with any great clarity . This might seem a trivial observation, but it is nonetheless a problematic reality for much research in the artis-tic field as well as in other areas . Having a result clearly within reach is of course always desirable, but rarely realistic in this context . Indeed, this was not a project in which it was possible to discern the outcome from the outset .
At times it may have looked like we were fum-bling after knowledge rather than gathering it in, but the experience was very different from the
in-Forms oF susTainabiLiTY 6 – 127
side . It was like rapidly immersing yourself in a situation where the main problem is not formulat-ing a clutch of startformulat-ing points, but rather gettformulat-ing to grips with the intersections that arise in the moment and that demand our attention . It was not a case of standing there, musing over which direction to go in, but of trying to understand, describe and critically study a movement that we were already implicated in and that we were una-ble to entirely disengage from, even if we tried .
Naturally, we could sit down, analyse the situa-tion and draw up a number of starting points be-fore moving towards a given goal . This is, after all, the way research in the design field has largely been conducted to date with regard to sustainable de-velopment . We have, for example, considered how we could replace one material with another with less of an environmental impact; we have thought about how things such as cars and electronics could be designed so that they consume less energy; we have looked at how people’s attitudes towards ener-gy consumption can be shifted towards more aware and restrictive energy usage . And so on .
But we are not starting from scratch . We are approaching this at high velocity from the past . Just as the design field has previously tackled a wealth of new design problems brought about by industrial and technological progress, and created
new areas of expertise such as “interaction design”
or “experience design”, we are now tackling ques-tions of sustainability and establishing yet another area: “sustainable design” . Our speed lends us sta-bility . Thus, we do not form entirely new points of departure, but rather work with the intersections that occur between the direction that our field has long been travelling in and the social changes that, from time to time, require some form of response and change within the field . Further, this way of dealing with change is not directly challenged by the views on design as an essentially problem- solving and user-centred discipline; a discipline whose need for disciplinary development is best met through applied research in collaboration with industry and other stakeholders, whose problems it is brought in to resolve .
So what actually happens when we use the ques-tion of sustainable development to examine the in-tersection between theory and practice by fusing what we traditionally call design theory or design history with design as a critical practice? If, for the moment, we allow ourselves to paint a simplified picture of how the relationship between theory and practice is typically expressed in design, we can say that during the initial formation of industrial design, for example in environments such as the Bauhaus in Germany, the view of art that emerged
128 – 6 Forms oF susTainabiLiTY
in the early 20th century underpinned the emer-gence of design – not least in the way we look at the artistic fundamentals of the discipline . Design was then placed in a hierarchy of artistic expression that would have design as “applied arts” or “decora-tive arts” . At this time, the ground was also laid for a quite rigid division of labour between those who express and those who interpret, between those who create and those who write . Design making becomes the domain of the practitioner, while the task of interpreting and describing the objects, the works and their history falls to the theorists .
This division between theory and practice, the institutionalisation of articulating critical reflec-tions on the one hand and mastering the art of making and creating on the other, leads to certain problems . One of these is the fossilisation of key concepts that we use and, as a consequence, the view of what constitutes the actual artistic foun-dations of the field .
A design process is largely about communica-tion . A designer is rarely, or even never, alone in the creative process . It is almost always a question of collaboration and dialogue; with other desig-ners, with colleagues in other fields, with intended users, with a client, and so on . In all these situa-tions, basic concepts and definitions are expres-sed not only after the design process is completed and there is time to reflect and theorise about
the result, but also during every stage from the start to the end of the process . However, due to the strict division between theory and practice that we adhere to far too often, we rarely or never clearly address the need to articulate new theories, definitions and concepts that arise as the journey progresses – since theorising is not something we have historically seen as part of a design practice . And if we (therefore?) reproduce existing defini-tions in what we do to such a large extent, there is also not much of an imperative for design theory to question existing interpretations and descriptions of what is actually taking place .
Of course this is an over-simplified description of relations much more complex and diverse than this . Still, it appears that the continued conserva-tion of prevalent distincconserva-tions between theory and practice must be challenged . There is a distinct need for a different type of theory development, new definitions and concepts, based on critical and experimental design work . Leaving respon-sibility for theory development to other areas of research, and essentially reducing design practice and artistic research to focusing primarily on (visual) expression, is likely merely to preserve the status quo when it comes to development of the field . A question for the future of design theory is thus: what possible alternatives can artistic and experimental design research offer?