It all starts with us...

     Design activism is defined by Fuad-Luke as "design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change".  To me design activism means taking a stand against practices that are frankly wrong and need to be changed. 
     I learned during my internship that sadly the Interior Design/Architecture industry is probably more guilty of over consumption and wasting than most other industries.  The aspect I am speaking about is in the use and waste of paper.  During my internship I was tasked with scanning hundreds of architectural plans into a scanner to then be stored on a computer.  Yet instead of shredding or recycling the old architectural plans once I was finished, I had to put them in boxes to then be taken to a storage facility to permanently be stored.  The amount of space taken up for storage was incredibly disturbing, not to mention the amount of paper used.  When I approached my mentor about recycling these documents, she said to me that our industry would be the last ones to become sustainable and do their part by going digital and recycling all of these old plans.  She also said that these plans are not the originals, but that there were multiple copies of each set of papers, which meant hundreds or possibly thousands more sheets of paper being wasted.  This statement spoke volumes to me.  I couldn't believe how wasteful this process was and how the industry that I want to become apart of blatantly refused to change their ways.
     Ever since then and from taking this course, I believe it has led me to try and take a stand against such wasteful practices.  I believe that the interior design and architecture industries need to become more sustainable in order to continue and survive in the 21st century.  This is the consumer group that I will be targeting, and they are over definitely over consumers.  This industry and its people are over consumers because they over consume items instead of only taking and using what they need.
     Our reading this week provides many great examples of how I feel about this problem.  Faud-Luke says that "the first group of people that URGENTLY need to change their behaviors are the designers themselves".  I fully believe this to be true, because if we are telling people to live more sustainable lives, then we first need to live that way ourselves and set a true example that sustainability is the future of not just our industry, but all industries.  Fuad-Luke goes on to say that "sustainability is learning about living well but consuming MUCH less; it is a social learning process and will involve moving from a 'product-based well-being' to thinking about products, dematerialized products, services and enabling solutions to satisfy our needs". 
     It all starts with us.  We have to look at our everyday practices (ie. paper consumption) before we can even begin to look at the products that we use and our other design methods and practices.  Taking a stand against issues/problems within our industry is what design activism means to me.


Course Assessment:
     I believe the most important thing I learned in this course is about all of the issues that are out there and that affect our lives and the industries that we are choosing to work in.  This course was a real eye opener for me to the problems that our planet faces and as to what is actually going on.  I feel empowered now with knowledge about our planet and sustainability issues.  I am also confident when speaking to people about practices and policies that are unsustainable and what needs to happen to change them.
     The one thing that I would like to learn more about is Biomimicry.  This area is of real interest to me as they mimic natural practices.  I plan on doing more research on some of the areas we learned about in this course to see how they can apply to the work I will be doing.  This was a difficult course, but I am definitely glad it was that way.  I feel I learned more in the long run because of how difficult it was.

New Concepts

What if all textile/design products were some how biodegradable?  They could go back to the earth as food once their useful life was over.  These products would be using the biological metabolism in that natural materials would be going back to the earth as food.  Waste equals food.  One company that is trying this already is Frito-Lay.  They have a corn based compostable bag for their brand Sun Chips.  This bag will supposedly break down over a 14 week period of time.  Well what if we took this idea and incorporated it into the textiles/design industry?  Our items could be made to break down naturally once their useful life is over and turn into food for our planet?  I think this is something at least worth researching to see if this corn based compostable product could be used in other products.