Roberto Ventura challenges conventional design thinking and problem solving to transcend boundaries.
Collective Action
Writing this title is not easy. Having dedicated my life to practicing and teaching design, I believe in its importance and power. But, when we analyze impactful design, we often find its companion action statement — “it changed the way we talk/operate/engage/think/other verb” — following closely behind. The important ingredient in all this is the pronoun we. Design, at its best, facilitates human development. Without a human agent operating on it, design is inert.
That is why design professionals need to change the way we talk about sustainability. Too often our conversations focus on technology and know-how, on spectacular and rightfully admirable project conceptions and executions, and the search for an “enlightened” client willing and eager to fund our experiments. Nobly (and naively), we persist in framing sustainability as a moral imperative: it is simply the right way to design.
Speaking of sustainability in these terms is ultimately insufficient. It contributes to an exceptionalist notion of the designer as the heroic genius and neglects the essential point: sustainability is not a building issue.
It is a human issue.
People created — and continue to accelerate — the environmental cataclysm in which we are immersed. As a result, humans suffer, and will continue to do so in predictable and unforeseen ways.
For designers to engage climate change, we must reconceive our role in this crucial process. Designers’ strength is our ability to not only work systematically but also to think systemically. When designing systemically, we recognize each formal move impacts structural, material, and environmental decisions. We understand this intuitively but must apply it more broadly in service of sustainability.
A sustainable future will necessitate systemic change on a global scale. Embracing a systemic view of sustainability shifts the focus of design’s role in two ways. First, it acknowledges that people live in systems — social, economic, cultural — and not in discrete quanta. Second, because developing a sustainable future requires engaging these human systems, sustainability presents as a wicked problem — one requiring a collaborative, integrated approach in which designers play complementary, not solitary, roles.
To address sustainability in a systemic manner, designers need to join with larger, more influential partners who can enact change on wider scales. This will mean actively and fearlessly engaging in the political process on local and national levels.
Sustainability is Social
Sustainability impacts people. As such, it exists not only as an architectural nor an ecological movement, but as a social movement with two important components: a grassroots foundation and top-down legislative support. This “mobility sandwich” benefits from the moral authority of a cultural groundswell buoyed by the legal authority of government.
In twentieth-century America, all great social movements achieved the critical pressure for change by combining these two forces. The groundwork of the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave moral authority to marchers and protesters. Eisenhower’s support of the Brown ruling and Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 lent legal power. Suffragettes forced women’s rights until the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. Government action without these foundations might have faced even more resistance. Grassroots action without institutional support renders it vulnerable to marginalization or violence.
To date, the grassroots sustainability movement has been largely composed of an informal coalition of like-minded advocates, including scientists, activists, environmentalists and others. What has been absent from this coalition is strong legislative support. This is where the profession needs to devote energy to enact systemic change. Without the courage to wear sustainability on our political sleeves, our actions to advance sustainability will remain impaired. The potential for arresting climate change will be doomed.
Acknowledging our limitations is a first step. As designers, our natural inclination is to wield design in the manner of Maslow’s Hammer: we see design as the answer to every question. Our attitude towards sustainability is similar: we believe if we build better and smarter, we will enter a new paradigm. This narrowness indicts design in two ways. It contributes to an intellectual exceptionalism and it refuses to acknowledge the exclusive nature of most design practices.
Detached Design Foundation
Given traditional design education, it is easy to understand how an exceptionalist mentality pervades the profession and impairs our ability to think systemically. One of the luxuries of the academy is its privilege to oversimplify questions.
This logical positivist legacy reduces spaces and buildings to simplified models for which conceptual frameworks can be developed, refined, and applied to express ideas in built form (or more often, a facsimile thereof). While this has value in teaching students to become critical editors of their own decision-making processes, studying in this manner detaches design from the richness and complexity of context. In this haven, the purity of an idea can be explored without the muddiness and responsibilities of the immediate. Programs in the spirit of Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio at Auburn University serve as exemplary models that connect design students to extant, complex contexts, but the echoes of disconnected study remain resonant in many educators and practitioners. This foundational ethos divorces design opportunities from the complexities of users and context and impairs designers’ ability to contextualize their practice − limiting it to being merely one element in a larger wicked system.
With this kind of myopia, it becomes easy for designers to overestimate the impact of their work. Even the most intelligent and sensitive construction is, at its essence, a consumptive process — of land, resources, energy, and often people — anathema to many tenets of environmental stewardship. We must accept that designers have a limited sphere of influence. As Ellen Dunham-Jones notes in her piece, “Seventy-Five Percent,” designers impact only a small fraction of the built environment1. Chances are, if you are reading this essay, you are also acutely aware that only a fraction of designer-led projects embrace sustainable ideas. Of those projects, only a few might be considered truly innovative. When discounting projects for affluent clients, few transformative and accessible models of building are left to admire, promote and emulate.
Extending beyond urban areas into less advantaged parts of the United States yields fewer and fewer examples of replicable projects. While the profession suffers from this scarcity, the public suffers more. The likelihood that people will ever engage with these sustainably executed projects is rare. As a result, they will miss the chance to rethink their agency in climate change. The reach of innovative sustainable design is distressingly confined. The belief that it can continue to rely on a limited number of change agents is egotistical folly.
Legislative Force
The nearsightedness that often results from these kinds of exceptionalist perspectives clouds the importance of and the need for a broad coalition of aligned partners. Designers are neither “magicians” nor superheroes — the best of us are thoughtful and empathic, technically sound and experimental, hard-working and idealistic. We will also find these qualities among our allies in sustainability. As partners in a larger grassroots movement, our impact can be much broader and influential, instead of being fetishized in professional journals and conferences.
The complement this movement critically needs is legislative force. With the moral imperative and scientific and technological capabilities as the foundation, strong, bold policy can provide the pressure from above to produce systemic change. Awareness of the perils of our current relationship to the planet is not new — Marvin Gaye sang about it long before Greta Thunberg renewed the call. There is no mystery about what needs to be done. What is lacking is a cohesive political imperative, and this is the ocean into which designers must wade. Designers must actively engage in local and national politics to have any real hope for systemic change. The mandate must have grassroots and top-down endorsement.
All politics, it is said, is local. Designers must become more active in this respect. An intriguing example is offered by a recent study that links climate data and urban design. Published in the journal Climate, Dr. Jeremy S. Hoffman, Chief Scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia and faculty in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs and the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, examined temperature maps in Richmond, Virginia2. He notes the hottest neighborhoods in the city, on average, are 6 degrees warmer than surrounding suburban areas; in the summer they spike as much as 15 degrees more. These communities also have the least amount of green space. A reflexive design response to these issues might be to simply design the streetscape for more foliage and shade.
Hoffman’s research also notes that these neighborhoods also map to the same areas that were redlined — the practice of restricting home ownership by African Americans by manipulating mortgage ratings — in the early part of the twentieth century. These neighborhoods also have relatively fewer economic resources and are largely disconnected from the city via the legacies of urban renewal. In addition to the increased demand for cooling these neighborhoods — and associated increased cost —this population also suffers from the highest rates of emergency heat-related illness calls in the city. In these examples, racism and climate change intersect and shed light on the crisis being a human one. It also illuminates the limitation of viewing the situation as a design issue.
The larger, more pressing questions in this case relate to advocacy and power and are systemic. These issues cannot be solely resolved by the clever designer; focusing solely on the physical design response treats the symptom and not the cause of the illness. Instead, broad local coalitions would be better able to secure the economic resources — including the improvement of the built environment — needed to address these issues at the core. In general, designers work for people of means, i.e. the powerful. When wide swaths of our community have no leverage, who advocates for them?
Which designers have the resources to single-handedly reconstruct neighborhoods? This example reveals the limits of designers’ expertise and reach. To elicit real change on local levels, a coordinated effort with multiple stakeholders and government officials is necessary. A single new building in this context will do little to resolve these deeply ingrained issues. Resolving wicked sustainability problems will demand a broad coalition of community voices, expertise, and political muscle working in concert to make change happen.
Scale and Government
Scaling this question to regional, state, and national levels reveals two things: the depth of cooperation and coordination required to effect change, and the relatively small footprint of impact designers have in the matter. Arresting climate change will require an effort scaled to an almost unfathomable degree. Imagining coastlines disappearing under rising sea levels barely begins to illustrate the importance of engaging politics on a national and international scale.
Effecting change at large scale is where government partnerships are vital. We can build grassroots coalitions with like-minded partners, but they need to be bolstered with strong central government initiatives that incentivize sustainable measures for all citizens. While purists may chafe at the notion of reducing sustainability to revenue, it makes sense to try to pull skeptics toward better living practices. The grassroots movement must cross philosophical and political lines. Australia3, a county whose sense of individualism mirrors that of the United States, exports more coal than any nation aside from Indonesia, yet has more rooftop photovoltaic installations than sustainability leaders Japan and Germany.
The price of batteries to store energy is projected to drop as much as 15% in 2020. Local governments also slashed bureaucratic obstacles to facilitate the deployment of photovoltaics (PVs) by homeowners. As Australians return power to the grid, their energy infrastructure has revealed its limits, providing an opportunity to boost its economy with shovel-ready projects. Australia demonstrates that bold economic incentives can spur smarter use of resources by people who might not necessarily pay it mind.
The top-down pressure — or perhaps better, the carrot, organically grown, of course — that government can provide compliments the grassroots foundation in four important ways.
First, it reaches out to demographics that are not already on board philosophically. A battle of beliefs, especially when the existential threat is an abstraction, is at best a noble slog. Lincoln wrote, “Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.” Bringing people who might otherwise be resistant under the tent is vital.
Second, building a market for sustainable technology can be an economic driver. Absent a rigorous federal sustainability policy, the United States will continue to voluntarily pass on drivers of economic development throughout the country and will remain behind other nations as they innovate and provide employment. As in Australia’s case, these economic drivers are not limited to industry; the energy infrastructure, badly in need of attention, security, and reinforcement, could infuse investment in the country on a scale unseen since the development of the Interstate Highway System.
Third, the increase in the sustainable products marketplace should have the effect of making locally made products more accessible and affordable, expanding measures that at least slow the pace of climate change.
Finally, arresting climate change is a matter of national security. As temperatures continue to rise, massive geopolitical ruptures will occur. Agricultural zones will shift, coastal infrastructure will be radically impacted, water rights may spur conflict, and wide swaths of earth will suddenly become accessible. Consider the impact of a warming Arctic coast of Russia: development booms, natural resources accessible, and new northern trade routes all will scramble the global dynamic.
I speak to American politics because the world has looked to the United States as a leader since World War II. With the abdication of authority since the 2016 election, this leadership void — in sustainability as well as other areas — has been filled by other countries. The Biden election presents a renewed opportunity to become a leader in promoting sustainable policy. Reestablishing legitimacy in American leadership will have an impact on the world.
The U.S. two-party system maintains radically different and partisan views on climate change, and this split has been reflected in the oscillations of the electorate. Arresting this oscillation is critical, because since 2000, it has become evident how much unilateral power the Executive branch of government has in shaping long-standing environmental policy.
To bridge the partisan divide on environmental policy, we need to be more empathetic listeners in our communities.
A recent BBC World Service story examined the area around Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania — the town famous for Groundhog Day — which is rooted in the fossil fuels industry and which voted predominantly for Donald Trump. Listening to the people interviewed brought into focus that, for many people, a shift to greener energy is an existential threat. Every proposal about wind power is balanced by communities that fear what will happen to them when the local coal mine closes. This threat is visceral. It taps into the most basic fears about providing for one’s family in the present. If any real acceptance of a vital national policy on battling climate change is possible, it must tackle the issue of the impacted communities’ survival. Until then, the road to change will continue to be difficult. When designers speak of the frustration of sustainability, the front line of resistance is rooted in basic human fears. Design empathy is a key factor in understanding this complexity. Combining this empathy with grassroots allies and intelligent policy will be necessary to collaboratively resolve these disconnections.
When asked why he refrained from making political statements, Michael Jordan famously said: “Even Republicans buy sneakers.” Designers committed to sustainability cannot afford this kind of apathy and neutrality. They must actively advocate for policy changes and for leaders who recognize the necessity of bold environmental policy. Like society, the design profession is far from monolithic. But if we are serious about sustainability, we cannot support leadership that refuses to acknowledge climate change and the roles humans play in this crisis. This stance will undoubtedly expose designers to financial risk. It may put them at odds with clients or with their own political platforms, but there can be no compromise when it comes to active support for leadership that prioritizes a holistic environmental agenda. This includes genuine rebuilding strategies for communities which will be potentially devastated by the industrial transformation that must inevitably occur if we are to rectify our environmental policy. We need to design ways to bring as many people under a sustainably designed tent as we can in order to make systemic change.
Beyond Problem Solving: Bridges, Partnerships, and the Opportunity at Hand
I do not frame design as a problem-solving activity. This characterization posits there is one solution to all problems: design. Our experience tells us that is not the case. If a chair was a problem, we would have solved it by now. Homelessness is a problem. A new home is not. It is an opportunity.
In a recent webinar, Sir Norman Foster presented his firm’s recent work for the Apple Park Campus in Cupertino, California. The elegance and environmental innovation typical of Foster + Partners’ work permeates this audacious project. It also could not be preaching more loudly to a choir committed to a sustainable hymnal.
As a circle in plan, the project physically and metaphorically looks inward. In doing so, it reinforces the distance between the idealism of sustainable design and the reality of communities afraid that environmental innovation will doom them.
Our opportunity, then, is to build bridges. We must connect to other like-minded partners whose expertise will amplify everyone’s work. We must establish strong coalitions at local and national levels of government and use that influence to lead globally by demonstrating how we take care of our most vulnerable. We must find ways to push global economies in responsible, sustainable ways.
We need to build bridges between Cupertino and Punxsutawney. Designers must recognize that we are sometimes too myopic or dazzled to realize we are overlooking the needs of the communities who hold the keys to positive change even while they may harbor anxieties that impede it.
Climate change is a problem. Designers are skilled at reconsidering problems and converting them into opportunities. What we have before us is the opportunity to reposition ourselves as partners in addressing this challenge. We have the ability to understand design as a methodology and as a system. We must be part of a systemic response to climate change. That mandates a commitment to partnerships — ideological and political.
The opportunity is simply too large not to.
Roberto Ventura is Associate Professor and Interim Chair of Interior Design in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University and believes designers should be in the vanguard of change. Exploring the intersections of multiple disciplines in terms of form, type, process, and communication, his academic and creative scholarship has ranged from the curation and design of exhibitions to the introduction of improv performance to design students. He values collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and his project partners have included graphic designers and poets. He is currently focused on issues surrounding diversity, inclusion, and equity in interior design. He holds a Master of Architecture from Miami University, a Bachelor of Arts in Math-Physics from Albion College, and maintains a solo practice, roberto ventura design studio.
Notes:
1. Dunham-Jones, W. (2000, Fall). Seventy-five percent. Harvard Design Review: Sprawl and Spectacle, 12. http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/12/seventy-five-percent
2. Hoffman, J., Shandas, V., & Voelkel, J. (2019). Integrating satellite and ground measurements for predicting locations of extreme urban heat. Climate, 7(1), 5; https://doi.org/10.3390/cli7010005
3. Albeck-Ripka, L. & Penn, I. (2020, September 29). How Coal-Loving Australia Became the Leader in Rooftop Solar. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/business/energy-environment/australia-rooftop-solar-coal.html