Ontological design as an ecological practice

Abby Mellick Lopes

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

I am going to design you a story. Design as an Ecological Practice was the name of a subject that I team-taught with my colleagues at the EcoDesign Foundation in the mid-1990s. The foundation was established as a new learning institution - a not-for-profit foun - dation with charitable status, whose aim was to educate, consult and research in the field of design for sustainability, or what was then called 'ecodesign'. We were housed in a building in the grounds of Rozelle Public School, Sydney, which was retrofitted to showcase ecodesign products, principles and practices and had a large rooftop photovoltaic solar array, the largest in Australia at the time. Everything we did emerged from the radical premise that design is deeply implicated in the unsustainability of both ourselves and our worlds and therefore has a critical role to play in thinking and acting our way into other modes of being and worldmaking. I remember being introduced to a quote from the poet Friedrich Holderlin that encapsulated the foundation's under - standing of design: 'But where danger is, grows the saving power also'. Everything we did was an effort to learn sustainable modes of being and world-making and to try to embody them. This was in the very early days of 'ecologically sustainable develop ment' con - sulting, so we were often employed to do straightforward jobs consulting on material specifications or renewable energy projects for clients like the Sydney Olympic Authority. If we did win a tender, we ended up totally shifting the terms of the brief.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)172-191
Number of pages20
JournalArena Journal
Volume47/48
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • ontology
  • design
  • evaluation
  • ecology
  • philosophy
  • photovoltaic power generation
  • sustainable development

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