The EcoDesign Foundation is a not-for-profit research and education organisation that exists to develop sustainability by design. It does this through generating and disseminating theoretical and practical knowledges that can engage current conditions of unsustainability.
EDF seeks to fulfil its mission by being a provider of formal education, an independent researcher, an initiator or collaborator on design-oriented projects and by working with other organisations, business and government.
Philosophy, as the discipline of rigorous thinking, is pivotal to the EcoDesign Foundation's activities. Philosophy means more to us than a statement of attitude or corporate policy. Philosophical understandings inform every aspect of how we work. Our philosophy is developed and applied in live contexts; we seek to avoid the disengaged and esoteric nature of most academic philosophy.
We engage with philosophy because we believe that new ways of thinking must be developed if we are to learn to comprehend current circumstances and be sustainable in response. Our work is based upon three inter-connected imperatives — new thinking, new making and new learning:
1. New Thinking — New Foundations of ThoughtThe modern world has been built upon the western rationalist tradition which predominantly understands (and makes) things in terms of linear causes and effects. This kind of thinking is now revealing its limits. It has shown itself to be unable to deal with the negative material effects its application has generated. EDF is working toward a new foundation of thinking, one which remakes with what already exists and innovates from an analysis of the core problems of our unsustainable present. Central to this is a relational thinking, that can bring into view, and can act in response to, complex dispositions, interconnections and forces of change.
2. New Making — The Power of DesignIn large part it is through design that the errors of rationality have come to be inscribed in the modern world. Technologies, organisational structures, products, images, modes of communication — there is almost nothing today that has not been designed. Even 'natural phenomena' only arrive before us via the designing of the instruments and theories we use to observe and understand them. If our modern world is unsustainable, it is by design.
Furthermore, designed things go on designing long after the designer is forgotten — they design modes of use, interaction, habits, tastes, values and much more. Contemporary society fails to grasp the impact of what design has put in place or design's significance. Developing a nuanced understanding of the power of design is regarded by EDF as an essential task. 3. New Learning — Discerning the Ability to Sustain.
EDF's philosophical project is to develop sustainability as a realisable concept. Against mainstream 'sustainable development' that seeks to maintain current forms of economic activity while reducing negative impacts, EDF's view is that sustainability cannot arrive while it is barely understood as a process. This requires recognition of the other two imperatives — new foundations of thought and the power of design. Only through careful thinking will we be able to determine what should and shouldn't be sustained. One of the first insights of EDF's work was to realise that something or somebody is sustainable if they can learn what needs to stay the same, what needs to change or what needs to be learnt. Such learning is the basis of a redirective practice, that is, a philosophy in action, which works to turn the unsustainable towards sustain-ability.
History
It was the desire to find more effective ways of taking action in response
to ecological crisis that prompted the formation of the EcoDesign Foundation
in 1991. Its founder, Tony Fry, then an Associate Director of the National
Key Centre for Design and a Senior Lecturer in Design Theory at the University
of Sydney, wanted a highly active organisation that would not be held
back by the formality of university structures nor the campaign-based
approach of the environmental movement. Founding members shared an expanded
understanding of design, recognising its central role in industrial culture
and its yet-to-be realised potentiality as a means of bringing about ecological
sustainability. They were committed to making this understanding more
widespread.
The EcoDesign Foundation has kept the thinking of sustainability moving, first by reversing the terms of ESD (ecologically sustainable development) to DES (developing ecological sustainability), thus subordinating development to the creation of sustainability rather than seeing it as an end in itself. EDF has argued that 'sustain-ability' is yet to be learnt and one way this can be done is through the creation of 'sustainments' — environments or things, material or immaterial, that have an ability to sustain those that depend on them.
The EcoDesign Foundation has always been a learning organisation. It has deliberately sought out and engaged a variety of design practices, testing out each context's potential for 'making sustainments' and pushing the limits wherever possible. The Sydney 2000 Olympics is an example — on the one hand EDF acted as an ESD consultant on several projects, working to reduce the negative impacts of what was built, but at the same time the Foundation has been publicly critical of the fundamental unsustainability of the international Olympic project itself.
EDF has been active in professional education, contributing significantly to increasing the ecodesign knowledges of influential architects and designers in the public and private sectors in Australia. It has influenced higher education through staff and curriculum development on sustainable design undertaken in collaboration with several universities and professional organisations.
EDF has never sought a mass membership nor diluted its messages to gain popular appeal. Yet many of the ideas it promoted and demonstrated in its early days are now well and truly in the public arena. For instance, in 1993 the EcoDesign Foundation took over a former school building in inner city Sydney redesigning it as a display and research centre to demonstrate low impact design solutions and products, and featuring the first grid-connected photovoltaic system in a retro-fitted building in NSW. It was actions like this that paved the way for today's 'Green Power' schemes in which electricity grids are increasingly being fed by energy from small scale renewable sources, with widespread public participation. But this initiative does not cancel out the need for much more to be done to make the generation and use of energy far more sustainable, in Australia and nearly every other part of the world.
A not-for-profit incorporated association, with a member-elected Board, was selected as the most suitable legal structure, binding the organisation to a set of founding objectives centred on the development and promotion of ecologically sustainable design through a very wide range of practical and theoretical activities.
EDF is an independent, entirely self-supporting organisation, not aligned with any government agency, political party, industry or professional organisation. It has received some project-specific government grants, support from local industry to establish its centre in Rozelle, Sydney and income from commissioned research. Current and future funds are from course fees, publication sales, project-specific sponsorship, memberships and donations (the EcoDesign Foundation is on the Australian government's register of environmental organisations eligible to receive tax deductible donations). As demand for its accumulated knowledges grew, a separate entity, Team D/E/S Pty Ltd, was established to deal with commercial consultancy work, freeing up EDF to focus exclusively on education and innovative, non-commercial research, such as developing advanced design theory.
Today EDF consists of a small team of highly qualified educators and design research staff, a member-elected Committee and a network of professional members and subscribers. It is increasingly working in an international context as strong collaborative links are being developed with design and education constituencies in Europe, Asia and the United States.