September has started, and it is time to start our master thesis. Today, we were finally introduced to the topic for this year’s master projects. Although, I would have expected more than two options to choose between, I was positively surprised that Domus has taken a little step outside of their comfort zone, in developing one of the themes for this year’s thesis.
The theme is “Trojan horse – Sustainability as a virus”. At first glance, they may be quite confusing, but as you elaborate, it starts making a lot of sense.
Sustainability, in the context of design, is frequently associated with a ’sacrifice’ of something. Although, there is a special skill in developing sustainable, ecologically friendly products…there is still a reluctance in the design community to focus 100% on sustainability in design, as it is perceived as a limitation, a sacrifice in designing a product experience.
Furthermore, design in the context of sustainability, has been pushed back to a classic dilemma of the design community. A lot of ’sustainable’ design today, has its origins in sustainable materials or engineering innovations that is merely applied by the designer. This makes the designer primarily a ’stylist’, giving form to the inventions by engineers. Historically, this is a dilemma the design community has been wrestling with, trying to underline that design is not equal to styling, but far beyond that.
Trojan horse :: sustainability as a virus encourages us to look at sustainability from a different perspective. What if we would never be aware of the fact that we are behaving sustainably? What if the product that we buy provides us a genuine pleasure, and sustainability is a secondary point? What if we could create a product that not only sustainable, but spreads sustainable behaviour, like a virus? In that context, we are asked to take inspiration from a ‘trojan horse’ and how a ‘virus’ multiplies and spreads in a computer system, and use this as the starting point for designing a truly sustainable product.
This project will be a genuine challenge. Although, I am very enthusiastic about the brief, if this would be easy, we would already have a lot such products around us.
