| Q&A: Revelations from Brandy Burdeniuk, Industrial Designer |
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Industrial Design is a mysterious profession; few people outside the design world know exactly what it entails. Essentially, it is about product design, and in our consumer-design world, nearly everything we come into contact with has been shaped by an industrial designer. Part engineer and part artist, industrial designers have the power to ensure that the things we buy (and throw away) won’t harm our health or the environment.
Editorial Assistant Monika Warzecha spoke to Brandy Burdeniuk of EcoAmmo about sustainability and industrial design. Brandy Burdeniuk: Absolutely. I have [a colleague] who teaches industrial design at the University of Alberta. Four or five years ago when he talked about green design and sustainability in class, he got a lot of blank stares and rolling eyes. Now he has students finishing his sentences and talking about the projects he’s talking about, nodding, and really, really excited about sustainability. MW: Is sustainability treated as more of a niche issue? If you’re interested in it, you can seek it out, but it isn’t something that everyone should have to take. BB: Yes, and that is changing. A lot of professors in their day-to-day activities are starting to incorporate it into their courses, whether it’s a comment here or there. It’s not a delinquency for the department, quite honestly. It’s just the time and the resources they have available to put towards these things. MW: What impact do you think requiring all students to take eco-design courses have on the future of industrial design? BB: If it were incorporated into the curriculum, it would be something that right out of the gates, students would be thinking about and later incorporating it into their basic practices. Not everyone loves sustainable design–they see it as an inconvenience–but a lot of people do want that knowledge. And learning about it as a student and learning about it as a professional are two entirely different things. As a student, you have a lot of people to bounce those ideas off of. There’s a lot more collaboration in school than there is in a professional field because many people hold their information tight to their chest. As designers, if we find a [new] product or material, we keep it really close to us because we don’t want other people using it in their furniture design. At the same time, sustainability is quite honestly rooted in collaboration. We can’t all find fantastic solutions by ourselves. We need integration and we need collaboration to find successful solutions that will work for the long term. And I think that’s what’s provided in a lot of post-secondary institutions is the opportunity to collaborate. Coming out of the woodwork MW: There’s been increasing pressure in other areas, such as business, to demonstrate environmental or social values. But designers are also implicated in practices such as planned obsolescence and throw-away culture. Do you think designers have escaped criticism for their role in this culture? BB: Absolutely. I joke that we’re kind of a secret society. As designers, we touch everything, but no one knows we exist. And we’re not held accountable to our designs right now. We design something that someone else manufactures and we collect cheques every couple of months for the sales of those products. Sustainability should be integrated the moment you think of an idea. It shouldn’t be that you design a really beautiful product and then you’re like, “oh crap, I need to make it out of a material that’s non-toxic”. All those things should be intrinsic to the design process. And right now, it’s not. I honestly think that designers of all sorts – industrial designers, fashion designers, architects, interior designers – need to be called to task because we’re the people that design all the things that everyone interacts with. And we intrinsically affect the health of the people who interact with those products, which is something that we’re not being held accountable for now. This is something that I have a personal interest in because I want to feel good about the things I design. Designing a solution MW: I recently spoke with Nathan Shedroff. He wrote a book called “Design is the Problem.” Do you think that design could ever be the solution to a lot of the environmental problems that we have? BB: Absolutely. And the reason I say that is because if we keep operating as business is usual with the same products and materials that are accessible to us now, change is not going to happen. I’m also a strong believer that change is not going to happen by consuming less bad things. Buying yourself out of a problem isn’t the solution. But at the same time, we do interact with a lot of toxic products and materials that need to be innovated, to be greener – people are always going to consume things. But industrial designers are problem solvers. And it sounds too simple to say so, but honestly, we need to do more things that scare us. We need to say: I’m not going to design this table and chairs with lots and lots of toxic adhesives. I’m going to look at what the up and coming thing is right now. Is it soy-based adhesives? Is it not using adhesives at all? Am I using the wrong material to get the shape out of this chair? What is it? As designers, it’s really essential for us not to get bogged down and realize that we can be part of the solution and not just turn out, shiny, fancy, pretty objects that happen to be made out of toxic materials. We can make shiny, fancy, pretty objects that just happen to be green. Material world MW: What materials are you finding that are pretty and good for the environment? BB: Well I can’t really disclose all of that (laughs) – just kidding. There are some interesting things going on with products that are fairly conventional and just taking out the toxins. We have some really neat fiber products that are coming out of the Alberta Research Council and Alberta Agriculture. There’s Oriented Straw Strand Board. It takes strands of straw, then lays them flat, then pressurizes them with a formaldehyde-free resin and you get this really beautiful stock material. You can build such beautiful furniture out of it. MW: Is it expensive? Things always come back to the bottom line. BB: Right now, it’s not in full production and it’s not available in a lot of places. We’ve started to move towards collaboration between industrial design and Alberta agriculture – for them to actually build products out of the things they’re innovating. There are also a lot of products that are being designed with a 100% post-consumer content – a lot of plastics can be endlessly recyclable. And of course, referencing William McDonough, the “Cradle to Cradle” mentality. It’s something that designers across the board should think about because we as designers often design for first point of purchase. Somebody bought it - we’re not liable for it. And if we start thinking about the actual lifecycle of the product, maybe we can pick materials that can also be part of that lifecycle. We’re seeing a lot more people integrating recycled steel and aluminum into their chairs and furniture. We’re seeing a lot more lighting that’s being designed so you can use compact fluorescents in it. Which is a big deal. We as industrial designers love the shape of incandescents. It’s a very sexy light bulb shape – it looks great even if you can see it exposed. There are some great products out there and some people working really hard out there. A lot of people go out and find vintage furniture and re-style it – which is a really interesting movement. We’re also seeing it in fashion with companies such as Pre-loved Clothing where they take things like old suit jackets and make them into really fashionable dresses. We have a design company here in Alberta called Fat Crow. They do a lot of interesting stuff where they reclaim old furniture. They take some things apart and put them back together in really interesting ways. Just keeping the furniture out of the landfill in the first place and bringing it back into people’s homes is a really cool concept – you’re not just stuck with that couch you brought back from Value Village that smells questionable. MW: Was there anything else you’d like to add? BB: We get lost in the shuffle a lot. We’re in there all over the place - like the people in Fight Club. We work in so many things and we’re involved in so much stuff, but most of the time no one has any idea we exist. CK |
Monika Warzecha: Are you finding more people are becoming interested in greening design?
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