Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter 5
Sustainable Design and
Social Responsibility
Green design encompasses numerous ways to improve processes and products to
make them more efficient from an environmental standpoint. Every one of these
approaches depends on viewing possible impacts in space and time and using
assertive design approaches to prevent or ameliorate them. Thus, green design is
teeming with opportunities to enhance our world.
Time of is of the essence. Green design requires a prospective view that
anticipates artifacts. In fact, this is the essence of
design for disassembly
(DFD).
One of the best counterexamples of DFD appeared in a magazine and in the
1970s, which showed a hand throwing out a disposable razor. The razor magically
disappeared. In fact, it is likely that razor is still intact in a landfill somewhere. The
life of the project continues well after the build phase, and even after the useful life
of the building, device, or other design target. Thus, DFD is not simply keeping
an eye for the use of materials, vacated land, or other remnants of the project. It is
a view of utility beyond the use phase predicted. Certainly, this requires postuse
considerations, such as insisting on the use of reusable materials and considerations
of obsolescence of parts and the entire system. In addition, it requires thinking
about uses after the first stage of usage and the avoidance (“down cycling”). For
example, if a neighborhood demographic were to change in the next century, is
the design sufficiently adaptive to continue to be useful for this new set of users?
This is not so unusual, as in the case of well-planned landfills, which may have a
few decades of waste storage, followed by many decades of park facilities. How
many strip malls or shopping centers were designed for but a few decades of use,
followed by abandonment and desolation of neighboring communities in their
wake? It is the height of arrogance to assume that a development or building will
not change with respect to its social milieu. Building design must embrace the
idea of “long-life/loose fit” and be sufficiently flexible to accomodate a variety
of adaptive reuse scenarios.
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