Consume your Ethics

[Will the start of the twenty-first century be remembered as the golden era of socially conscious design?]

We are now in an era where we have a constant desire for change, and living in a developed nation we have the power to evolve to this. Our technological developments have reached a point where, we as consumers are dominating the cycle, and where what we demand is readily produced. However what we forget is that nearly one billion people, a third of the world’s population, live in slums; and this had been projected to double by 2050[1].

It could be argued that we are unconscious of the way we live, and in what ways this effects the way the developing world function and survive. I feel we are losing track off what is important to us, that a new handbag or perhaps the need to replace a sofa because it just doesn’t suit the living rooms new decor. The book ‘Design like you give a damn’[2] focuses on solutions for humanitarian issues.

One example the book offers is the ‘Hippo Water Roller’ which ‘literally lifts the weight off the shoulders of millions of people’. It is a water container that allows one person to collect four times the amount of water possible with just one bucket. This design not only saves time, but also saves the backs and joints of those who use it. Perhaps this example demonstrates how their can be a more ethical, and wider reaching approach to design, that is more innovative than the ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ campaign.

So maybe we need to ask whether the start of the twenty-first century will in fact be remembered as the golden era of socially conscious design. The challenges in the developing world highlight the opportunities for design to be used in sustainable ways in every day life. It also illustrates how we can’t play hide and seek anymore, global warming is accelerating and we can’t escape the future that we have created for ourselves and future generations. Perhaps design will now change from just being ‘a value- added extra’[3] to perhaps a solution for the many problems we have taken time and care into designing.


[1] http://www.unhabitat.org/
[2] Murphy, D. (2006) Design Like You Give A Damn, New York: Metropolis books
[3] Bell, J. (2003) Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life, London: Walker Art Center
Image: http://www.design21sdn.com/attachments/0000/0294/_Hippo_roller1_432x_.jpg