The Evolution of Design Process - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 24

concerns were the outgrowth of media attention given to environmental dis-
asters, such as those in Seveso, Italy and Love Canal, New York (e.g., could
Knopfler's “some come out in spots” be a reference to the chloracne caused by
dioxin exposure at Seveso and Times Beach, Missouri?), and the near-disaster
at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. But Knopfler's
lyrics are particularly poignant, prescient, and portentous in light of the fact
that he penned these words years before the most infamous accidents at Bhopal,
India and Chernobyl, Ukraine, both causing death, disease, and misery still
apparent decades after the actual incidents (“Sociologists invent words that
mean industrial disease ”).
Recently, musicians have embraced green and sustainable design principles. *
One of the most prominent advocates is singer/songwriter Jack Johnson. Be-
yond lyrics, Johnson has rethought his music enterprise, including redesigning
his studio, specifying green materials such as bamboo flooring and utilizing
the sun as a source of energy. The band Pearl Jam required that its 2003 tour
be “carbon neutral,” † and in 2005 completely switched all tour buses to run
on renewable biodiesel fuel. Johnson did the same and credits many of the
ideas to the older “rockers,” including Neil Young and Bonnie Raitt. In our
first class of first-year green engineering students at Duke, when asked about
their reasons for taking the course, two mentioned that they want to combine
science and engineering with music. This is further evidence of an emerging
trend in whole-brain thinking of the next generation of designers.
This is also evidence that sustainable design is really not just about sustaining
but about enhancing green ideas. The symphony is being played at the inter-
section of the two generations, and spanning once distinctly separate worlds
of study.
* See “Going green,” Billboard , http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/live-earth/green-artists
.html, accessed September 2, 2007.
† Carbon neutrality is the concept that no more carbon is released than is sequestered in a given
process.
MODELS FROM NATURE OF INTEGRATED SYSTEMS DESIGN
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple
or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is
lacking and nothing is superfluous.
Leonardo da Vinci
( The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci , Jean Paul Richter, 1888)