Sustainable Design: A Brief Appraisal of its Main Concepts

ABSTRACT Research linking design to sustainability surfaced in the 1970s and has since received broad attention in academic and professional literature. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring from 1962 and the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis from 1974 inspired design, among many other disciplines, to search for an appropriate balance between industrial cultures and natural surroundings. This article tracks a brief idea‐historical account of sustainable design theories. Main concepts in the field are consolidated under three criteria: ethics, technology fixes and social interaction. These criteria are considered as the main motivators for research and theory development in sustainable design. Following the Introduction, which gives an overview of concept development in design in general and sustainable design in particular, the second section explains the methodological onset for the analysis and introduces three concepts that represent important trends in sustainable design theory. The three concepts: Papanek's socially and ecologically responsible design, the Design for the Environment approach, and Manzini's sustainable everyday philosophy, are analysed in the third section according to the role they assign to the criteria. Further, the section reviews the concepts within a wider debate on sustainable development. The article concludes with a proposal as to how conceptualization in sustainable design could proceed, to meet the complexity of sustainability issues in present society. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.