Enabling Solutions for Sustainable Living: A Workshop.

Four teams, each of four or five graduate students at the University of Calgary, looked at what exists in a typical Canadian suburb and developed hypothetical plans for using those resources differently. Their work, plus introductory essays by three professors, makes up this little explanation of design for sustainability.

The underlying premise is that the consumer lifestyle of North Americans is not ecologically sustainable: 20 percent of the world’s population is consuming 80 percent of the world’s resources. The student teams were challenged to find new uses for resources that already exist, thus improving day-to-day life without substantially increasing consumption. Using a multidisciplinary approach, they looked at four aspects of a typical suburban neighbourhood: underutilized cars, streets, yards, and interior spaces in private homes. Could cars parked for most of the day be used for a vehicle sharing network? Could those wide, nearly empty streets become multifunctional piazzas, places for community events? Or why not try home schooling for small groups of neighbourhood children, holding classes in houses rather than building a school? Those with large yards could make garden space available to landless condo dwellers. Each team looked at what would motivate the various stakeholders to participate in the plan, the activities that would be needed to implement the proposal, and creating a poster to promote it. The objective was to find ways to live better while leaving a lighter ecological footprint.

The text is stilted, lacking both clarity and energy. Nonetheless, an innovative way of looking at the mandate of design and some fresh perspectives on the nature of sustainable living are hidden under the dry-as-dust presentation.