Research project What stories lie hidden in the objects we use every day? The design historical project Material Ecologies of Design traces the unseen journeys of materials in our phones, furniture, and daily products. By following these flows—from extraction to reuse or disposal—the project explores how design shapes the planet and how we might create more sustainable futures.
Design history has largely been concerned with objects in their finished form. To engage with the environmental crisis we need to develop approaches better geared to address the ecological implications of designing. We need to open the black box that is the consumer product and examine its constituent parts; the ecological properties and material entanglements of which it is made. This project posits that a transition from consumer society to circular society requires a deeper historical and cultural understanding of how processes and acts of designing regulate the use of extractive materials.
This project considers design not in its manifestation as consumer goods, but as circulations of materials shaped and directed through design processes. This includes design’s roles in extraction of raw materials, technological transformation, use patterns, and re-use afterlife. Moving the analytical gaze from the design of the consumer product to how design regulates flows of materials from the mine to the mall provides us with an entirely new prism for understanding how design configures consumption and for assessing its ecological impact.
Design makes and unmakes the environment. Nowhere is this more palpable—yet underexplored—than at the level of materials. Firstly, materials are designed. Most obviously, this applies to artificial materials but even natural materials are subject to human alterations and creative interventions. Secondly, materials do design: materials quite literally constitute designed objects, and as such, materials shape design as much as design shapes materials. From this perspective, the role of design in the management of natural resources in general and extractive materials in particular becomes paramount.
The project gathers a group of scholars who work at the intersection of design history, design theory and environmental humanities to develop and test concepts and methodologies by analyzing selected case studies, organized in three thematic nodes.
