ABSTRACT
The ‘Awareness’ project aimed to explore and define industrial design for sustainability. Electrolux is recognised for its corporate excellence and best-practice policies in the development of environmentally sound processes and systems and for the launch of leading environmentally sensitive products to market. With some 100 in-house designers working across the product development spectrum, the Industrial Design Centre is recognised as being of central importance to Electrolux’s overall corporate environmental performance and is challenged to engage with key company concerns and contribute to its environmental success. For Electrolux the design project was seen as exploratory design research to develop relevant ecodesign working methods and practice. Electrolux brought design capabilities, skill and experience to the project. The collaborative workshop resulted in a design brief, which was a basic statement of intent for the design project. Though each product stands alone, by considering the kitchen as a system, designers create kitchen products that are interconnected and networked to share information and resources.
