Nathan Shedroff

Nathan Shedroff gave a very clean and well-presented lecture at UC Davis last Wednesday on the subject of sustainable design. He provided a very accessible slogan for sustainability as a rule of thumb: “Don’t design things today that make tomorrow worse.” And if that didn’t convince you on the importance of sustainability, he tacked on “…for your kids.” He outlined sustainability as being both a business model and a design issue, the inseparability of these two fields was something he could not stress more. In the wake of the Great Recession, he noted, we have a unique opportunity to make sustainability the focus of reconstruction. On this note, he emphasized not only the “green” side of sustainability, but also the financial and social aspects of it. We must not only aim to design for a greener future but a more economically and culturally realistic world, in which responsibility for our actions must be taken in everything we create. This means thinking about the consequences of our manipulations of the world around us have on the rest of that world, or “systems thinking.” This also means working as designers in many disciplines. He stressed the ability of good designers to point out better ways to do things in any field. As we are all part of one global community, we must take into account that fact when designing. I think this is a good way to approach sustainability when handling corporate shot-callers who may not respond to just “green” arguments.