ABSTRACT
As the shift toward sustainability proceeds designers ethical underpinnings will be confronted with a wider range of people and concerns whose interests must be weighed. Finding a pathway for assessing those obligations and first steps toward ethics in a sustainable world are the subject of Chapter 5.
The design professional is likely to be among the lead in shift to sustainability because of the special knowledge, expertise, and position provided by their education, experience, and distinctive position in the society. The movement to sustainability requires the development of new measures of success and ongoing innovation—in other words, change. In such an environment, designers should thrive—new materials, new methods, new processes, and an ongoing re-imagination of what is done, what is possible, and what is necessary, all appeal to design. In such a world, it may be necessary to rethink old standards because the scope of sustainable design involves a much broader set of stakeholders.
The entire world of design is being reassessed, and the guiding principles and ethics reflect the change. Performance and design standards are necessarily being reconsidered and require design professionals to be central to those considerations in part because of the special knowledge they hold and in equal part because of the ethics that guide the use of that knowledge. Innovation and change involve failure. Expecting and embracing the lessons of failure, both design and ethical failure must be a part of innovating for sustainability. Perhaps new standards will emerge based on performance outcomes rather than adherence to rigid “design standards.” Applying sound science and engineering experience may provide more sustainable outcomes than tweaking old standards around the edges. What role do professionals who review the work of other have in this process? Is it merely to critique, or should the process become more collaborative?
Designers bring value to projects, but they also bring values to the work they do. The scope of these values is changing, and this may require a deeper understanding of the obligations that designers accept as they go forward.
