Material Innovations

This summer I had the opportunity to replace an old porch on a house built in 1905. (Portland hosted a world’s fair that year.) It was all original including the many, many layers of paint showcasing the colorful eras of the past.  (60’s pink and 70’s yellow included.)

As a practice I took time dismantling the old bead-board ceiling, tongue & groove flooring and antique 2×4’s knowing their salvage value. All the new material brought in was chosen for its ability to withstand another 100 years.  I made numerous trips to the salvage yard, pawned some off on neighbors for their restorations, separated recyclables, and saved every burnable piece for just that.  I felt like I was doing the right thing.

Today I made my one trip to the dump to toss the few things that I just couldn’t save.  I had 8 garbage bags cleaned of everything that wasn’t hazardous.  The dump, or Metro Waste Transfer Facility, for sensitive urbanites, is a vast covered structure amassed with contractors and homeowners throwing trash into a big pile while giant tractors scoop it into a belching conveyor belt to be compacted and put on a train to central Oregon.  It even comes with the requisite seagulls swooping and diving like crazed kamikaze seeking that last discarded big meal wrapper.  Taken in as a show it is like Lord of the Flies meets Cirque Du Soleil.  Every five-year old boy dreams of treasure spots like these, tractors included.   And yet, the scene is also one of the futilities of personal sacrifice.  For every paper scrap I personally save for the recycler, at the dump there are tons waiting to ship out for a big hole in the desert.  For every antique 2×4 I arduously de-nail and plane back to expose its glorious old-growth grain, there sits a mangled pile of wood here because of laziness and the insatiable manufactured need for the new.  Entrance fee for the show?  A mere $70 a ton.

While I was unloading, a well-heeled man drove up in a rented van, opened the back, and threw out a nice couch into the pile.  It was too big for him to lift so he rolled it end for end onto a pile of old roofing material.  There was a puff of dust from the shingles below as it landed on them. The cushions were light so he tossed those far to the top of the garbage mound separating them from any chance of a future life with their mother.

It was then that the problem really hit home.  Here was a well-off person who spent money renting a van, paying a dump fee, and spending personal time, all to dispose of a sofa that looked on the surface to have many years left.  Here is someone living a life where reuse is either culturally wrong due to perceived status or oblivious to the idea that 10 minutes on Craigslist and that baby would be gone. (FYI: Waste management workers get searched at the end of the day and if they have taken any trash with them they are fired.  One worker told me he has seen guns and jewelry but can’t touch them.  Who knows if those guns could solve a crime.)?

So am I really doing any good?  Does the magazine mailer I insist goes in the recycling at home really matter when the cultural and physical systems of waste disposal are stacked so heavily against me.  People in our AC+D program routinely toss aluminum cans in the trash and we are the one’s who should know, or a least save them and make crappy jewelry out of them.  How can we change when Fred Meyer bans plastic and angry citizens bemoan the fact in the newspaper that they no longer have a free way to pick up their dog crap?

Well, we matter by standing up and screaming, “Hell yes, I’m going to keep trying to make the difference by being the example for others.”  I guess I’ll just have to keep trying for those personal victories and that beautiful old-growth grain.

So I have to say, after reading many of these blog entries and the readings for this week, I am once again finding myself grateful that I attended the progressive liberal activist institution of UVM.   Much of the research presented in Brand’s article was covered over and over again in the environmental science and biology classes I took.   As a resident of Slade Hall ( a dorm where we grew our own food, ate bio-regionally, purchased in bulk from a co-op, prepared communal meals together and made community decisions by consensus) I was introduced to the fundamental principals of permaculture and to the professor John Todd and his work developing a water filtration system he calls a living machine which are now found all over the world including here in Portland.  The point is, while being inundated with dire information, I was also surrounded by people who were actively engaged in creating solutions to these issues.  This balance is vital to preventing severe depression in the face of overwhelming statistics.

Malaise sets in when we recognize the enormity and complexity of the system we are a part of.  Revolution is intimidating.  The corporatocracy and the military industrial complex which backs it, has grown to an unintelligible  and inhuman scale.  Is it possible to design our way out of this comfortable but increasingly imprisoning box?  Can the peaceful people of the world, of which I believe make-up the vast majority,  regain control of the systems and governments which stand in the way?  And can it be done with out the loss of life?   With considered design, appropriate technology and attention to whole systems I think it is possible.

I admit to being brought to the verge of hopelessness by our class readings this week, which contain some very sobering statistics about climate change, the state of the world, and the massive effort required to change our course. But then each author included something like, “But wait! Our planetary demise provides us with countless exciting design challenges!” I admit, too, to being infected by some of that excitement, but with a reserve of skepticism.

One way some designers are meeting challenges is by using 3-D printing machines, which receive directions and patterns from a computer to produce objects by “printing” layers of material. A recent New York Times article, 3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution, describes how one company uses the technology to create prosthetic limbs, which it claims are a fraction of the cost and include more complex features than commonly-produced prosthetics. The prospect of being able to produce customized prosthetics and other objects that provide real benefits for users is appealing. So is the idea of being able to send a personal or commercial design for an object to a 3-D printer where it can be produced locally, thus removing transportation costs and reducing energy use.

I have conflicted feelings about 3-D printers, however, because most current machines print in plastic, which is a non-renewable, non-biodegradable material derived from oil. 3-D printers don’t seem like “revolutionary” tools for the future if we have already reached peak oil, and therefore have reached peak plastics. Also, it seems many 3-D printed objects are adding to the mass of consumer products bound for the landfill (do we really need to print more plastic figurines?). I even feel somewhat offended by the goals of a company that wants to build concrete houses with the technology; as the NYTimes article explains, “Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.” This seems like another robots-will-make-life-easier fantasy, and I’m wary of maligning manual labor and elevating clever designers.

I am impressed by all the innovations in technologies such as 3-D printers, yet I wonder how well these types of design will serve the common good when the technologies are not accessible or viable in vast areas of the world. I’m drawn to S. Balaram’s concept of the “Barefoot Designer” in his book Thinking Design, in which members of a community (not outside designers) explore local resources to develop the solutions to local problems. I think many solutions in many locations are and will be low-tech.

I also feel rallied by Alastair Fuad-Luke’s proposal to use design to tackle the United Nations Millenium Development Goals. He writes that “each goal encompasses a unique collection of problems, each of which becomes a design challenge.” (Design Activism, p. 72). I’m encouraged that human ingenuity and design can be used not only to create cool building models from 3-D printers, but also to address the most pressing social and environmental issues of our time.

Taking a look at my stuff was a good start to understanding several things. First, I have a lot of stuff, and second, I have very little idea of where the majority of it comes from. Most of the things that you see in my photos (a very small percentage of my total belongings) I try to take good care of, even though some of it is poorly made and will only last a little while. I find it ironic that the only things I was carrying made in the United States are essentially lethal consumables (matches and cigarettes).

It gave me no joy to make this simple catalog of things until I realized one great thing; I am so connected to such distant places! Maybe that sounds a little far reaching, but consider for a moment how this is the first time in human history when we’ve had the capability of direct and easy contact with nearly every other nation and culture on the planet. Sure, I agree with you fellow posters that this is mostly because of our desire to consume their products, which has thusly led to a fragile and seemingly doomed global future. However, we have the capability to change, and now we have the connections to really make it happen. We are an international community that is becoming increasingly more aware of the problems we’ve created for ourselves, and this awareness will hopefully lead to quick action. It is my belief that now is that time for action, a time in which we have the most power to solve these problems as a global neighborhood. We’re all in this together, so I say we quit our nay-saying and apocalyptic whining, and give China a call to let them know what’s up.

Based on innumerable sources, it is clear that the world, as we know it, is doomed.  Accounts differ as to the timeline, some suggest the end due to solar activity or pole-shift as early as 2012, others are generous and suggest things will continue until the third or fourth decade of this century ending as a result of increased global temperature related conditions.

As far back as I can recall, I’ve always felt confident that the world, as we know it, would end in my lifetime.  In decades past this end-of-days was linked to direct human activity, mainly global-nuclear warfare.  As the cold war atrophied, that end-of-the-world scenario remained present, but the means have changed from direct, to indirect human activity – mainly in the form of human-enhanced climate change.

Whether or not the world as we know it will end in a few decades due to cataclysmic events, Western life-style practices, or even ten-thousand years of global human agricultural cultivation, one thing that is striking is the level of Western guilt that has crept into the dialog.  Certainly I am guilty of this guilt, both in terms of feeling it as well as promoting it. Yet, I am also painfully aware that I am doing little about it.  I feel like a member of a chapel choir who belts the praises of the Lord at every Sunday service, but outside of church, I live like a heathen, boozing and carousing at every turn.

But what is this guilt-ridden Western designer to do?  According to Singanapalli Balaram, I am not country enough to make a positive contribution to the simple life where design is REALLY needed.  According to Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Discipline, I am not scientific enough to contribute to curbing the climate crisis.  And, what good reason is there for me to sacrifice my comforts while the rest of the West continues to trample the commons?  Brand suggests: “be as life-changing as any earthworm in the big yard.”  Great.  Show me an earthworm with a mortgage.

One thing is true:  The majority of my design-thinking these days has gone quietly to the topic of Cataclismic Survival Implements.  Maybe this will be a fruitful endeavor.

The human race is merely a conditional consequence of what we have titled Earth.  We are refuse or immaculate conception of chemical chance.  This is the great mystery that we have for some reason, can only comprehend our notion of being by imposing death to others.  By conquering and controlling physical resistance we have established notions of success, which in turn has lead to ego.  We have established the presumption of ownership.  We must now own up to the repercussions of our selfish acts.  Between every word and sentence of Fuad-Luke’s and Brand’s essays I sense fear.  We are scared of death.  Furthermore we are deeply ashamed in the awareness that it is our fault.  This planet will continue, but will no longer be known as Earth.  As titles perish, so does ownership.

I find it ridiculous that there are those who are still holding onto the ideas of the physical as solutions to our faults.  Physical solutions, i.e. control, is what got us into this predicament in the first place.  Is the physical our only notion of understanding?  What is needed from design now is acceptance.  The focus of the problems we have now are no longer the ramifications of our impact on the planet.  It’s too late.  The problem lies with our acknowledgement of our arrogance.  This is a time to accept that there are no longer physical answers that can be put into practice in a timely manner in order to sustain our species.  We for a long time, have had nothing else to kill besides our selves.  It’s called genocide.

Acceptance is peace.  I can’t think of a better way to leave a place for future dwellers.

Alistair Fuad-Luke ‘s chapter on Global-Local Tensions shows some crazy statistics from the WWF’s Living Planet Report.  This maps out different countries’ ecological footprints, which are calculated according to how much is consumed according to what is deemed appropriate for their land/population ratio, compared with how much the country imports, which is essentially borrowed ecological capacity from other countries.  At least this is how I understand it.  Anyway, of the over-consumers, I am not surprised that the great U. S. of A. is second (after United Arab Emirates), but coming in for a 3-way tie for 3^rd is… Finland!?!  I, being originally from there, find this fact of interest.

image from mapsofworld.com

Then I looked at the rest, and Finland was in good company.   The other names in the top include other Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Australia, Canada… all places we consider to have a high standard of living (see Human Development Index), all places that I enjoy, or have desire to visit.

These places feel good, comfortable, that high standard we desire.  The big question is, how do you convince all of the places with the highest standard of living, to give it up, or at least create it in a different way?

Pig 05049 (from artist website)

This reading also highlights a truth that all designers must consider. “Every choice a designer makes when specifying materials has an effect on the habitat of other living species, so knowing where materials come from is an essential design skill.”  Christien Meindertsma is a wonderful Dutch artist whose work identifies the source of materials, as well as their end use, such as in her project, “Pig 05049,” in which she researches where all parts of the pig end up. I am looking forward to seeing the book on this in person.

Christien Meindertsma Flocks project. Each hexagon uses the wool from one sheep. (from artist website)

On the source topic, she worked on her signature oversized wool “Flocks” with a particular ranch in Idaho, where each sheep got recognition for its wool.   This was part of a multi-artist project with the Nature Conservancy called “Design for a Living World.”  This is definitely worth checking out.

Colors achieved with natural dyes (from Claudy Jongstra website)

Another great fiber artist, who also happens to be Dutch (Hey, they have great design!), is Claudy Jongstra, who raises her own sheep and plants for natural dyes.  These ladies are my role models.    To follow in their footsteps, I am going to be taking a natural dyes course, and I plan to check out the 2010 Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival for some local wool.  Hopefully my environmental impact won’t be a whole footprint worth, maybe just a pinky toe.

As a creative person in this world I struggle to justify choices I make sometimes. Am I just making more stuff for our consumption-driven culture?  Does anybody care about handmade things? Am I living a meaningful life? What’s wrong with the things I already have? What does it matter?

I feel overwhelmed (constantly) by the fact that our society is a major contributor to over-consumerism. People have lost touch with where products come from and how they are made. Because our society is a disposable and temporal one, we fail to recognize real meaning in the objects we possess anymore. We are constantly being over exposed to by new trends and fads and forget about the atmospheric and good qualities with the possessions we already own.

While it’s difficult to tackle this problem on a global level, I believe a good start at solving this consumption problem is making small connections with the things we already have for making small transitions to a better – less consumer-driven – society. We cannot continue to dispose of items just because they are deemed unfashionable. Reconnecting with the things we hold an affinity for is an important step to reconsidering how we want to live.

What is my footprint?  I’m aware that many of the items I own are produced in all seven continents.  Except, I couldn’t specifically tell you where or how.  It is nearly impossible to know the origin of some of these things without some stealthy investigation and even then information can’t be found.  In many industries the corporate supply chain is top secret and I assume many would like to keep it that way.

Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff presents the systems challenge of creating a more sustainable world from a high level perspective.  Even after seeing this viral video and being profoundly effected by its message I can’t help but wonder if people can make the connection to their own possessions.  I don’t think we can’t cognitively digest the consequences of this information.  This lapse in cognitive recognition is known as the identifiable victim bias and the reason why charities choose to focus on one specific child in need instead of telling us of the horrifying number of people effected.

I think we need to start getting specific about the supply chain so people have the option to consider their footprint.  The ‘back story’ of the product can matter to consumers. Take this project called Significant Objects conducted by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker.

Basic premise:  Inexpensive cast offs are purchased from yard sales and thrift stores for a couple dollars each.  Professional writers craft a fictional story about the object.  Objects are placed on Ebay alongside the crafted story.  Objects sell for far more than their purchase price.  Experiment reveals an increase in the object’s value in the eyes of the consumer.

What would happen if all products were required to provide information about their origin and environmental footprint?  My guess is the true stories of these products are unfortunately more interesting than any fictional literary creation.  It will be disheartening, to say the least, to learn more about the origins, labor conditions, and environmental impact of the methods and transit required to distribute these goods, but I think we should have the option to find out so we can make more informed decisions and reduce our footprint.  One tiny step to make it harder to ignore the truth.

When you wash your clothes, do you feel grateful or guilty? How about when you do the dishes, or take a long hot shower? How do I, as a young, female, North American, Applied Craft and Design Graduate student, begin to understand global conditions? How do I cope with, or react to, the pressures and realizations that come with learning?

While reading chapter 3 of “Design Activism – Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World” by Alastair Fuad-Luke, I find myself driving into a pool of depression, and sinking slowly down. (Gloom aside, if you have not yet read this, I highly suggest it for a condensed understanding of global climate conditions). I believe, or hope, that the human condition is on the mind of all designers and makers. We make for people who have a need. And as the wants and needs of our societies shift, so too will the work we are doing. According to this chapter, we are past peak oil, ice caps are melting at an excelled rate, meanwhile we are running out of fresh water and population in going to exceed the earths capacity sooner than most people realize. Now, those are some heavy pills to swallow, and I am left thinking damn, what can I do? And also, what am I willing to do? Living in Portland, OR, I am fortunate to learn about these topics while in the luxury of my own urban apartment.

When I think of global responsibilities, I tend to think I need globally sized solutions. But that is not me. I do not/can not react on this huge and seemingly overwhelming scale. What I can do, however, is act locally. This is what Faud-Luke is referring to when he says there is a global-local dualism. I can ride my bike as much as possible, turn off the water when I am not actively using it, eat locally gown foods etc. and know/hope that those efforts help. I am not sure what I think will happen to the world over the next 50 years. We could be already totally screwed. All I can do, is maintain a conscientious lifestyle, and try not to get too bogged down by modern guilt.

image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beck_-_Modern_Guilt.jpg

*term ‘modern guilt’ of course references Beck’s album released in summer 2008. Thanks Beck.