Sustainability and longevity

During Clerkenwell Design Week 2024 I was a talking head on a Spacestor webinar about sustainability and longevity. Here are my preliminary notes gathering my thoughts on various aspects.

longevity and love:

if you love something you will keep it, care for it and repair it
do you love your desk?
if your employer says tomorrow we get rid of all the furniture and install new, do you cheer or say, please can i keep item x, item y, take it home?
[this also shows if people identify with the office culture expressed by the furniture]

love promotes longevity
give people stuff that they will love for a long time

acceptance of the worn and tired
knowing how to curate and refresh it
taking a pride in having old things - as a positive social value

longevity beats recycling
recycling is last option - wastes embodied carbon

simplicity:

a forty year technological revolution covered everything with CPU boxes, cables, monitors, keyboards, mice, desk phones, and more paper than ever before
furniture became complicated to cope
now that tide has receded

after a technological revolution
we can return to archetypes of table, chair
with the least adaptations to current use, to enable longevity
the simpler the better

not beholden to fixes for current issues
not requiring other parts of the same system to work
[manufacturers like you to buy into a system]

sourcing and manufacture:

sustainable means we can do something indefinitely without negative impacts
non-extractive - what we take out, we put back

new stuff:
circularity
localness - short chains (raw materials, manufacture, delivery)
quality - build-quality and aesthetic quality (which is not the same as luxury , glamour or fashion!!)

existing stuff:
how can we reuse it? (honouring the embodied carbon and original intentions for long life)
what are the challenges - condition, repair, aesthetic, operational?
what MUST we get rid of?

responsible disposal:
as complete items to other users
as raw materials for reuse or recycling

do an audit of the existing resources before starting design
treating it as the raw material for our work
how little do we have to change or add
not assuming a blank canvas that we can add some retained pieces to afterwards

fashion:

separate parts that are from parts that aren’t
maximise the parts that aren’t
make the parts that are, low environmental impact
resist false narratives of fashion that drive consumption

fashion robs things of their social value before their use value is exhausted
since it is social value that is being robbed we can choose differently
accept the dated
see the time specific nature of design as a positive quality

narratives:

The long-term part of sustainability comes after the design team have left
the client has to take the intentions forward, do the looking after, the change management, etc.
The narrative and policies have to be embedded in the culture of the client, not just as concerns of a few people who might leave.

Users need to understand and own the narrative
what has been provided and how to look after it to ensure that sustainability objectives are met
what behaviours are needed

Does the client have their own narrative?
What can we add to that?
What stories can we tell, that have worked for others, can we show them a path forward?
Does the client have in-house forums, or people with specific interests/expertise?
Does the client have existing policies that are widely understood?

How does the workforce take ownership?
So that it’s not just the business of a few technical people.
It becomes a normal system (as recycling waste has become normal).
A set of protocols that everyone understands.
No longer a novelty or challenge to how we do things.