How Can Design Help Us Change the System?

Designing Matter, Energy and sustainability, Essay, expanding design practices, No Density, Politics and economics, Urban Paradigms, Zero Waste Design Guidelines

Architect’s role, Circular design, Circular economy, Consumption, Design, Designing Matter, Economy, Essay, Global Awareness, History, Humanity, Materials, New York, Planetary urbanizations, Production, Recycling, Society, Sustainability, Urban Paradigms, Urbanization, USA, Waste management, Zero-waste

Originally published in Zero Waste Design Guidelines -- https://www.zerowastedesign.org/

The associated exhibition curated by Andrew Blum is called Designing Waste: Strategies for a Zero Waste City and will run June 14 through September 1, hosted by the Center for Architecture, New York.

Early hunter-gatherers created no waste because all their discarded materials were natural. But even then, humans used their powers of design to make better tools. As societies developed, buildings evolved as products of our advancing design skills, but their forms and functions were strongly rooted in place. Local vernacular architecture illustrates this connection. As humans built cities, the density of habitation meant that wastes needed to be managed to reduce odors, vermin and disease.