It is apparent that the only way for our societies to become more sustainable is for them to stop growing in material intensity (standing stock, but more throughput), something that will likely be forced on our societies by ecological collapse if we cannot preempt it. There are many versions and understandings of degrowth. This presentation focuses on questions of how to transition the Global Consumer Class, who reside primarily in the Global North, to social systems no longer dependent on increasing material intensity. I will try to identify the ways in which design has been part of growth-based systems. I will talk more about the ‚social practice pull‘ that leads to material growth than a ‚marketing-based push‘. Modernity has involved solving problems with things, and things that in turn need other things (product ecologies – see Ian Hodder‘s „Where are we Heading? The Evolution of Humans and Things“), things that are owned and renewed and so proliferate. Designing for degrowth is then the challenge of transitioning the relations between people and things.
Professor Cameron Tonkinwise teaches Service Design and researches Sustainable Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). His expertise has reshaped traditional thinking around how designers should be educated, and he has established Design Studies programs at the Parsons The New School for Design (New York), Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) and UTS. Cameron has been a leading voice in the emerging practice of Transition Design, enabling human-scale designers to facilitate systems-level change toward more equitably sustainable societies. His collection of essays on the philosophy of design, How Designing Happens, will be published by Bloomsbury next year.
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