by Jeremy Faludi

Architecture has its William McDonoughs and its Shigeru Bans, who does product design have?

Nobody. (Really, I encourage you to try naming some in the Comments. I'd like to be proved wrong.) Franco Lodato is a big-name designer doing biomimicry, but he's not particularly green. Michael Braungart is one of the greenest people in product design, but he's a chemist.

McDonough has also done a lot with Braungart to suggest guidelines like Cradle to Cradle, but he's still an architect, he doesn't design products. Buckminster Fuller could have been called a green designer for his Dymaxion car, and kitchen, and such, but he was more of an technologist than a designer, and in any case he's not around anymore. Amory Lovins, Gunter Pauli, and other big names have helped companies green their manufacturing lines, but have not done much if any design.

A few reasons. Partly it's because what makes a product sustainable are the manufacturing & business model on one end, and the science & technology of green materials on the other end. The company owners are the ones who can make green happen. The designers just use the tools they have and design to spec. For instance, Herman Miller had big-name designer Yves Behar do a green lighting product for them, their Leaf Light LED lamp. Behar is not a particularly green designer on his own, but Herman Miller's design requirements made the product green.

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JEREMY FALUDI
Product Designer
Researcher
Teacher

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