What is Sustainable Design?

There is a really interesting article from Millennial Magazine about how a design firm in South America is using recycled plastic 2 liter bottles filled with sand for building materials used in home construction. The title of the article is "Waste Not Want Not" by Britt Hysen. With minds like these, our planet may just have a chance after all.

In its purest sense, sustainable design is design that does not detract more from the local environment than it contributes. When I say environment, I mean a closed or semi-closed system and everything within its boundaries. For example, a building that is the product of sustainable design will do its part to create efficient use of resources, create aesthetic appeal, be economically feasible, coexist with local flora and fauna, and serve the needs of its inhabitants. This is not to say that there will not be trade-offs, but these trade-offs must fulfill some purpose and not cause unnecessary amounts of degradation to the local environment.

To put this into an example, I will outline a sustainable home in a desert climate. The design of the home will incorporate locally sourced materials like stone. The building will use very little water and efficiently recycle water resources, much like any other system in the desert. The home should also use techniques to ventilate and cool the home that are commonly found in natural systems of the area. For example, building the southern face of the structure into an embankment or cliff face.

Lastly, the structure should not destroy the ecosystem for purely aesthetic means. Essentially, the structure should become a functioning part of the local environment, creating continuity with the natural landscape.

sustainable means the earth can absorb all the materials from that product and it does not having any adverse effects on the surroundings. --Gajanan P.

In engineering Good design encompasses a few key components. Good design meets the needs of the client, is enjoyable to look at, is functional and maintainable, is efficient, offers value for the client’s money, and balances capital investment and operational costs.

If I were to describe sustainable design I would say that it encompasses all of the attributes of good design while ensuring that its manufacturing processes, operational efficiency, and decommissioning all have the smallest impact on the surrounding environment as possible. I believe that ultimately design strives to be sustainable, but the understanding of the complex forces that dictate the total ecological impact of society is still being developed.

It used to be that you could think of a building project as sustainable by examining its direct and immediate impact on a site. Now, the entire supply chain of that project has to be examined. The life cycle of every resource that goes into the design of a product has to be examined before it is deemed sustainable.

In its purest sense sustainable design is design that does not detract more from the local environment than it contributes. When I say environment I mean a closed or semi-closed system and everything within its boundaries. For example a building that is the product of sustainable design will do its part to create efficient use of resources, create aesthetic appeal, be economically feasible, coexist with local flora and fauna, and serve the needs of its inhabitants. This is not to say that there will not be trade-offs, but these trade-offs must fulfill some purpose and not cause unnecessary amounts of degradation to the local environment.

To put this into an example I will outline a sustainable home in a desert climate. The design of the home will incorporate locally sourced materials like stone. The building will use very little water and efficiently recycle water resources much like any other system in the desert. The home should also use techniques to ventilate and cool the home that are commonly found in natural systems of the area; for example, building the southern face of the structure into an embankment or cliff face. Lastly the structure should not destroy the ecosystem for purely aesthetic means. Essentially the structure should become a functioning part of the local environment, creating continuity with the natural landscape.