Ecological Design: A New Critique

Ecological has come of age. It is now about a decade since the first wave of emerged as a significant new factor in product and graphic Though it is, by no means, fully developed and accepted, and only just beginning to be implemented in education, for example, there is a broad consensus that environmental issues can no longer be ignored by designers and critics. There has been a significant change in recent years, from the days when it was just a matter of getting the environment onto the agenda, and establishing the broad parameters of a practice-the inevitable process of reappraisal and differentiation as a movement begins to acquire a history and a polemics. Already, a second or third wave of ecodesign practice and criticism has emerged which is concerned with a more subtle analysis of meaning and methodology. As it has developed over the last decade, ecodesign has constantly borrowed ideas and terminology from ecology and environmentalism, though rarely is this explicitly acknowledged. It seems important, therefore, to evaluate the changing course of ecodesign since the mid-1980s within the framework of the broader development of ecological ideas. One notable feature is a change in terminology: the original term design is rarely used today and, although it was the buzzword the late 1980s, it is already passe. Instead, ecologically or environmentally-sensitive or affirmative design, or more generally ecodesign, has become the most widely accepted term. In the last year or so, this has, in turn, given way to design. These terms are fairly interchangeable, and perhaps the importance of such substitution of words should not be exaggerated, but they are one indication of shifting attitudes. The transition from green to eco- to sustainable in the field represents a steady broadening of scope in theory and practice, and to a certain extent, an increasingly critical perspective on ecology and Here, use of terms seems to indicate an attempt to wrestle with the complexities and implications of an ecological approach to design-going beyond the rather simplistic notions of and the environment in the previous decade. In this essay, which is part history and part analysis of ecodesign criticism, I use these three terms as keywords to explore different facets of ecological design, and to contextualize them within particular phases of the environmental movement in the last decade. I have emphasized the more radical theories to emerge within both and environmental thinking in order to demonThe author would like to thank Gui Bonsiepe, Tony Fry, Philip Goggin and especially, Harry Sutcliffe for their help on the preparation of this article.