Slow design (1)

1.How did we get here?
1.1 Design in crisis?
Contemporary design, as an activity, profession and materialised
outcomes, appears ill-equipped to deal with issues of pressing
importance. New questions are being asked of design as societies and
cultures confront a globalised political, corporate and environmental
agenda, encompassing global warming, pollution, scarcity of water and
energy resources, poverty, social malaise and health scares. Can
design rise to the challenge or is it a victim of its own success in
service to industry, consumerism and a politicised global economic
agenda? Has design lost its way? Rachel Cooper, editorial chair of the
Design Journal, asked ‘Is design undergoing a philosophical
crisis?’(Cooper, 2002) and, in the same issue, Walker (2002) examined
‘the cage of aesthetic convention’ controlling design culture.

Against the background of these questions it seems that current
perceptions of design and designers are rather negative.
Manufacturers perceive designers as providers of competitive
advantage in product value, market share and lower unit production
costs, rather than as professionals who play an overall integrative
design role in the organisation and its strategic objectives (Bohemia,
2002). Fuad-Luke (2002a) referred to the debasement of the adjective
‘designer’ as it was applied to shallow political ambition, in the phrase
‘designer diplomacy’.

Today, the general public often perceives designers as mere stylists to
a (rampant) consumer economy. Designers have successfully
converted financial, natural, human and social capital into a new
anthropocentric focus of consumerism. In doing so they have been
directly responsible for a catalogue of adverse environmental and
social impacts and have assisted in encouraging new consumer habits.
Shopping has successfully supplanted the old faiths. In the 1980s the
artist Barbara Kruger’s astute commentary “I shop therefore I
am” (Kruger, 1987 untitled (Fig. 1)) revealed a sea-change in ideas of
identity in the ‘developed’, Western world. Self-identity has a new set of
references in the consumer world. Even art was susceptible to the
forces of consumerism, as writer and critic Suzi Gablik noted in the
early 1990s: ‘Our thinking about art [has become conditioned] to the
point where we have become incredibly addicted to certain kinds of
experience at the expense of others, such as community, for example,
or ritual….Not only does the particular way of life for which we have
been programmed lack any cosmic, or transpersonal dimension, but its
underlying principles [have become] manic production and
consumption, maximum energy flow, mind-less waste and
greed’ (Cline, 1997). Subsitute ‘design’ for ‘art’ in Gablik’s commentary
and the critique outlines core problems with the current design
paradigm. Designers, and all those who call their efforts ‘design’,

urgently need to examine their role in the early 21st century. How can
design deliver more sustainable patterns of production and
consumption together with improvements in quality of life for humans
and co-existent life forms?

Figure 1. untitled Barbara Kruger 1987

How did design arrive at its current state of affairs? Design has fulfilled
many roles since the emergence of the consumer era in the 1950s.
Hauffe (1998) believes that the history of design and of culture are inter-
twined and illustrates Küthe/Thun’s 1995 model for design and society
(Fig 2.). He suggests that design history is a record of the forms of life
and dominates the history of cultural development (including technical,
economic, aesthetic, social, psychological and ecological aspects).
Today design in the ‘developed’ world, and parts of the ‘developing’
world, finds itself serving a ‘society of satiety’. In this society Hauffe
claims that self-presentation and experiential design are perhaps
beginning to find a voice in the culture of design, albeit against the
dominant corporate culture within design. Hauffe presents the model as
linear, but in the context of ‘developed’ or ‘developing’ countries it is
clearly possible that a number of ‘societies’ and ‘design models’ can
operate concurrently.

What is also clear is that modernist, organic, post-modern, or any other
doctrine with a recognisable semiotics, is easily subverted in the
service of industry and to the glory of consumerism and economic

progress. A case in point is the Italian manufacturer Alessi SpA, a
manufacturer that intelligently contributed to and, simultanteously,
manipulated the post-modern debate in the late 1980s to mid-1990s to
create new markets for an emerging ‘cognoscenti’ of ultra design-
conscious consumers. At the same time global corporations created
lifestyle products in a pot-pouri of historical, retro and contemporary
styles. Style, masquerading as design, is still the great enabler,
sequentially packaging the latest technology in new guises in order to
sell the next generation of products. Corporate ambition, encouraged
by the capitalist political doctrine, continues to ensure that inbuilt
obsolescence, the touchstone of industrial design, keeps producers
producing, consumers consuming and designers designing.

Design, and designers, have risen to the challenges of the industrial,
consumer and knowledge economies, as envisaged by Murray (Fig 3),
but in doing so design remains a lackey to economic ambition and so
finds itself in a philisophical and creative cul-de-sac.

Figure 2. A model for design and society, adapted from
Künthe/Thun, 1995 from p19, Hauffe, Thomas (1998)
Design, A concise histor

Figure 3. Seven Ages of Man, from Murray, Will (2000)
Brand Storm

©2004, 2005 Alastair Fuad-Luke. All rights reserved.

1.2 The challenge of sustainability
There are parts of the design diaspora that have actively sought to
deal with contemporary challenges. Sustainable development has
created new opportunities to evolve and develop new approaches and
re-appraise the overall philosophical stance of design. Over.the last
two decades, as the nations of the developed world emerged into the
brave new era of the post-modern, post-industrial, post-traditional,
global society, questions have been posed by numerous observers
and critics of design theory and practice (see for example, Balcioglu,
1998; Margolin & Buchanan, 1995; Whiteley 1993, Manzini, 1997). A
key challenge has emerged – that of trying to minimise the impacts of
production and consumption on the future sustainability of the planet.
From the green design debate in the early 1990s (Mackenzie, 1991)
there as been steady progress in this area (Datchefski 2001, Fuad-
Luke 2002b, Charter & Tischner 2001). However, such progress still
requires significant socio-cultural changes in individual and business
behaviour in order to deliver measurable benefits in terms of
sustainability, something noted much earlier by Manzini (1997) who
saw socio-cultural and technological change as coupled in the
sustainability challenge for design. Others have emphasised the social
role of design (Papanek, 1995; Whiteley, 1993; Clarkson et al, 2003).

Despite such valiant efforts to engage the design profession/industry,
in re-evaluating its role in meeting the sustainability challenge, a
glance at the output in many books about design reveals a ‘business
as usual’ philosophy. Culturally influential designers reveal that new
materials, new technology, psychological aspects of design and
individual versus universal solutions are their dominant foci for design
in the twentyfirst century (Fiell & Fiell, 2001). Fewer than 5% of these
designers showed a core interest in or understanding of DfS issues
(Fuad-Luke, 2002c). Spoon, a global overview of contemporary
product design assembled by eminent designers, editors and curators,
is also fixated with contemporary aesthetics, although there is
evidence that a few designers were genuinely trying to engage in
experiential design and eco-design, both part of the Design for
Sustainability (DfS) diaspora (Terragni, 2002). The overall lack of
engagement with eco-design or DfS is echoed elsewhere. Karim
Rashid’s editorial selection of designs for the 2003 International
Design Yearbook (Rashid, 2002) continues to highlight form and
function, aesthetics, fashion and style rather than contemporary
sustainability issues. Such qualitative observations tend to support
Walker’s observation that design is stuck in ‘a cage of aesthetic
convention’ (Walker, 2002). Although some designers, and
manufacturers, have clearly escaped this self-imposed cage by
embracing the challenges of Design for Sustainability and generating a
pluralist aesthetic (Luke, 2002b).

It would be encouraging to think that designers, and the design
industry, have engaged with and embedded DfS, (economic,
environmental and social well-being) into day-to-day practice.
However, DfS remains a marginalised activity. Acknowledgement of

designers’ efforts in this direction through awards tends to be confined
to specialist categories, such as ‘ecological’ in the well-respected
German iF awards, or to organisations such as the International
Design Resource Awards (IDRA) in the USA. During the last decade
there has been growing activity in the arena of DfS, fresh eddies in the
dominant tide of design thinking. Organisations such as Doors of
Perception, O2, Droog Design and Yours Eternally regularly offer
platforms for healthy dissidence and creative debate. Macdonald
(2001) also notices new ethical dimensions and an increasing self-
consciousness amongst designers about their social and
environmental roles. And, academia has been conscious of its role in
raising awareness around ecodesign (e.g. Brezet and van Hemel,
1997) and DfS (e.g. Demi, 2001) and continues to explore new social
models of design (e.g. Margolin & Margolin, 2002). Despite this
valued progress, designers continue to support, actively or by default,
a design paradigm to stimulate economic growth and ensure market
competitiveness of products (from mobile phones to cars and houses).
Tertiary education also diligently prepares graduates to reinforce this
paradigm across the creative disciplines, although there are a small,
but increasing, number of issue-based design courses that buck the
overall trend.


1.3 The current design paradigm
Today, design is the dutiful servant of technological, economic and
political interests in almost every area of manufacturing and
construction. The products of consumption range from packaging for
food to electronic goods, automobiles and leisure equipment. Even
today’s new housing is informed by and designed within a vision driven
by short-term economic goals. The offspring of this design paradigm
are billions of products and buildings, most destined to lead very short
lives in order to stimulate (replacement) production. This roller coaster
of production is partly driven by an unswerving belief in economic
growth as a given cultural good. The flow of production is encouraged
by Moore’s Law, originating in the computer industry, which states that
every eighteen months there is a doubling of computing power or
halving of price. Moore’s Law has come to dominate strategic
corporate thinking and preceptions governing success in the
marketplace. This leads everyone into short-term thinking and short
product life cycles leading to a cultural sense of a world speeding up.
Brand (1999) shows that Moore’s Law actually results in exponential
growth, a phenomenon better known as ‘very rapid change’, to which
most humans do not take kindly.

Design is accelerating real and cultural perceptions of the rate of
change. Designers are the willing translators of technological concepts
and prototypes into desirable, marketable products. This paradigm of
industrial design dominates thinking in the entire design domain
(product design, architecture, landscape design, graphic design, textile
design). It was first developed by Raymond Lowey and his
contemporaries in the 1930s to enable the USA to create economic
growth. Here was a fundamental shift from the concept of product
durability, products designed and built to last a lifetime, to product
ephemerality based upon the marketplace and the creation of
economic growth through an orchestrated psychological shift from
perceived consumer needs into consumer wants/desires.
Psychologists such as Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud,
were engaged in government ‘think tanks’ whose raison d’etre was to
ensure the American people became good consumers leaving the
business of governing the country to those who knew best.
Consumerism emerged as the new way of living from the 1950s
onwards and went global somewhere in the 1960s when television, yet
another consumer product, ensured a communication design channel
par excellence for increasing consumption through advertising.

The deep-rooted effects of consumerism on society at large, and
design culture, is marked. Guy Julier (2000) notes that the current
culture of design is dominated by the belief that consumers construct
their identity primarily from the products that they buy. Today, the way
we perceive ourselves is often inextricably linked to our material world
of technologically designed consumer goods. The realm of
consumption has even pervaded how we design buildings, houses and
spaces and how we spend our leisure time. Such a culture has
created a dominant design paradigm which Alain Findeli (2001)

lamblasts as inadequate for the education of new design graduates
since it merely replicates the status quo, rather than seeking to find
ways of evolving design to meet contemporary needs and challenges.
Findeli sees the current design paradigm as being underlain with a
metaphysics of materialism, limited by positivistic methods of enquiry
(problem:solution) and as having an agnosticist, dualistic worldview.
To quote Findeli, “Design was summoned to absorb the shock of
industrialization, and to soften its devastating consequences upon the
cultural web, in other words, to make industrialized products culturally
– socially, economically, symbolically and practically – acceptable.
Aesthetics was then its privileged rhetorical tool, followed by
ergonomics in the mid-twentieth century, and semiotics (i.e. aesthetics
again) in the late-twentieth century. But its almost unique field of
actitity has remained the material product; manufactured by
mechanical, electrical and/or electronic industries.” Design’s role is
nowadays confined to the aisles of hypermarkets, glossy magazines,
shop windows and our homes, a vast sea of banal commerciality. In
the post-modern emotional style fiesta of the late 1980s Claudia Donà
noted that ‘we live in a world overflowing with our own productions, a
world in which objects beseige us, suffocate us, and very often
distance us from one another both physically and mentally…..they
make us forget how to feel, to touch, to think. Accustomed to living in
a uniform light, we have grown oblivious of the shadows and fearful of
the dark’ (Donà, 1988). Plus ça change in the 1990s, although the
global brands have added yet more sophistication in blending the
semiotics of design retro and last month’s fashion in equal measure to
sell ironic, faux, and pastiche products. The style game gained
another layer of complexity.


1.4 Speeding up time, space and
resource flows
Design in the service of technology and commerce is implicit in
creating new perceptions of time and space while concurrently
accelerating the flow of resources to maximise production and
economic growth. Donà (1988) refers to the co-presence of past,
present and future (time) in the modern age and that ‘Greed and
obesity, transferred from food to time, mark out a new aesthetic
frontier’. Objects and places are mere temporal metaphors, avatars of
another time or place. The new global order ensures a unitary vision
of time as global networks (TV, radio, internet) deliver instant
knowledge and global transportation concatonates space. This has
created a global time frame that goes beyond the functionality of World
Standard Time zones.

Jencks (1996) charts shifts in space/time models over the human
timeline. He proposed that the cyclic space/time model of the pre-
modern era (10,000 BC to AD 1450), with its slow-changing reversible
time culture based on space-time separation, was replaced by a linear
model in the modern era (1450-1960) focusing on a sequential and
progressive culture resulting in space-time compression. Here the
idea of ‘progress’ was borne. Finally Jencks sees the collision of cyclic
and linear models in the current post-modern era (1960 onwards)
creating a space-time implosion resulting in a relative speeding up
and, hence, new perceptions of a fast-changing culture.

Perhaps Post-modernism was inevitable given the space-time
changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in the mid-nineteeth
century. Kern (1996) describes an accelerating culture of speed
emerging from the 1870s onwards as the telephone, telegraph, cinema
and the bicycle created opportunities for travelling faster, either
virtually or physically. The Futurists celebrated this emergent culture
and Marinetti observed that the new religion-morality of speed was
born. Speed became the emblem of modernity. And technology, in the
pursuit of modernity, sought to anilate time and distance. This comes
with some cultural risk. Kern notes Rifkin’s arguments that the
industrial civilisation created rhythms and tempos quite different from
those created by organic evolution with more and more precisely
organised precision and insufficient time for imprecision. Kern refers
to Achterhuis’s diagnosis that the father of the modern capitalist
economy, Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, originally published in the late 18th century,
stressed that all technology and all economy is fundamentally in one
great struggle to combat the scarcity of time. Since design is wed to
both technology and economy then design has also contributed to a
perceived speeding up of our lives.

Although recognition of the fast-changing nature of today’s cultures is
widespread, perceptions of time are complex. Kern further notes that
Acherhuis sees dualistic perceptions where one perception is of an

constantly accelerating rate of living where people don’t have enough
time (accelerated time) interspersed with a contrasting perception
comprising moments of rest, meditation and wonder (quality time).
Manzini (1996) sees strong personal perceptions of speed bound up
with western cultural meanings of personal freedom and mobility.
Such cultural perceptions allow people to design (the speed) of their
lives but perhaps fail to fully recognise the impact of the technology-
economy nexus. The net effect of these shifts in time perceptions
creates social jet lag for those who couldn’t keep up. In the 1970s
Alvin Toffler coined the phrase ‘future shock’ to describe the dizzying
disorientation brought about by the premature arrival of the future
(Toffler, 1970). Entering the 21st century the process of globalisation
has made many societies and cultures indifferent, blasé or induced a
sense of powerless about the speed at which technology and the
products of manufacturing change our lives. Everyone is too busy with
the present to recall the genuinely postiive things of the past or engage
in critial thinking about the future.

On a broader picture Will Murray refers to a timeline of accelerating
‘economies’ (Murray, 2000) The Industrial Economy commenced 200
years ago, the Consumer Economy 50 years ago and the Knowledge
Economy 25 years ago (Fig 3). How has design contributed to these
economies? Design facilitates mass production and rapid turnaround
of new styles ensuring shorter product (market) life cyles and
encouraging consumption for fashion’s sake rather than real need.
Design encourages greater resource flows and increased the
production of factory and post-consumer waste. In the Industrial
Economy flows are typically raw materials and energy; in the
Consumer Economy energy, finished materials and products are the
dominant flows; and in the Knowledge Economy flows are
dematerialised as electronic information yet they require large
amounts of energy, raw and finished materials and products to support
the rapidly expanding knowledge infrastructure (satellites, internet and
telephony networks, local networks and individual PC workstations).

Design gives the Industrial, Consumer and Knowledge economies
material form, semiotic content and so generates socio-cultural
relevance. It has also generated an unsatiable demand to use (finite)
resources and create mountains of waste. Design has accelerated
resource flows. It is therefore not suprising that the role of design in
encouraging more sustainable production and consumption has
received considerable attention. Such work focuses on reducing the
environmental impacts by the reduction of materials and energy
usage, closed loop production, eco-efficiency, life cycle analysis and
industrial ecology. This body of work is well documented by Charter
and Tischner (2001) and in the Centre for Sustainable Design’s series
of annual conferences called Towards Sustainable Product Design
from 1995 to the present. New design approaches and tools have
emerged including green design, Design for the Environment (DfE),
eco-re-design, ecodesign, LCA, DfX (where X is Assembly,
Disassembly, Recycling), and Design for Sustainability (DfS). While
such design approaches often have made considerable progress it is
not clear how successful they have been in reducing our production

and consumption metabolism, i.e. the speed with which resources
flow, although the Wuppertal Institute’s MIPs system is a means of
measuring redution of material flows over time. Moving towards
sustainble design practice is not easy. Many observers have noted
the phenomenon of the rebound effect, where gains in eco-efficiency
and economy are lost through the monetary savings being applied to
other forms of consumption (e.g. Manzini,2001).

More recently there has been a resurgence of interest in how we can
reduce consumption by designing products that satisfy cultural norms
for form, function and emotion, by reviving ideas of universal design,
human-centered design, experiential design and emotional design
(see Clarkson et al, 2003; McDonagh-Philip and Lebbon, 2000). This
shift of focus is welcome and perhaps signals a new ethical dialogue in
the design industry and profession to re-examine the human-object
interface. But such approaches are piecemeal and their specialist
nature does not bode well in counteracting the juggernaut of the (fast)
industrial design paradigm, a paradigm which still celebrates the
modern movement’s fascination with speed and whose default
metabolism is high. Industrial design is ‘fast design’ governed by the
tridos of technology, economy and politics.


2. Searching for an antidote
If ‘All men are designers’ where ‘design is the conscious effort to
impose meaningful order’ (Papanek, 1972) and ‘Design is making
sense of things’ (Krippendorff, 1995), then how does design respond
to the contemporary challenges of the eco-economy (Brown, 2001),
environmentalism and socialism, and how does it balance the local
with the global? Some urgent questions face designers. By 2050,
when 10 to 20 billion people will inhabit the planet, will design be
contributing to a headlong rush towards human and planetary tragedy
or will design have found a new paradigm to contibute towards more
sustainable ways of living, working and playing? How can we summon
design to deal with the shock of globalisation and its consequent
environmental and socio-cultural degradation? Can design create new
perceptions, and values, of time. Can design de-accelerate economic
and human metabolism?

New cultural conversations about the value of ‘slowness’ are
emerging. “Slow” is perceived as an antidote to “Fast”, the latter being
our default everyday world. Recent uses of the adjective slow, such
as the Italian ‘Slow Food’ and ‘Slow Cities’, have tapped into a
viewpoint that people recognise. The idea of ‘slow activism’ is gaining
ground (New Internationalist, 2002). Slowing people and flows of
energy, materials, and/or information is central to concepts of
improvements in well-being by designing products and services for a
regenerative economy and creating ‘islands of slowness’(Manzini,
2001). Such ‘ islands of slowness’ hint at ‘a sea of fastness’. Speed is
a concept resulting in a continuum of individual and socio-cultural
perceptions. Without the fast we can’t appreciate the slow, and visa
versa. Recognition of this continuum is important for any paradigm
offering itself as an antidote to the current design paradigm.

Findeli (2001) defines a paradigm as ‘the shared beliefs according to
which our educational, political, technological, scientific, legal, and
social systems function without these beliefs ever being questioned, or
discussed, or even explicated’. The reference framework for the
existing design paradigm is technology, economy and politics. If the
framework is not changed then the paradigm remains uncontested.
The debate on sustainable development encourages a longer-term
view but still places the economy in the driving seat. In fact, the
governments of many countries build economic growth into their
visions of sustainable development. Economy is perenially justified as
the key provider of improved human well-being. Design for
Sustainability (DfS) could have provided the focus for a new design
paradigm but its tridos of economy, environment and society, has
failed to galvanise the design profession towards a new paradigm.
With this realisation Fuad-Luke (2002c) proposed that design should
(temporarily) put economic factors to one side while re-considering the
contemporary role of design in meeting the real needs of people and
the environment. ‘Slow design’ was conceived as a means to refocus
on anthopocentric (individual + socio-cultural community) and
environmental well-being. It is seen as a counterbalance to the

existing design paradigm of ‘fast design’. It is about transforming our
current materialistic and consumer vision of the world. It is about
evolving Industrial, Consumer and Knowledge economies, into a new
vision based upon a slower, longer view than the short-termism that
these capitalist economies perpetuate. It is about finding new visions
for living, working and playing which respects the human condition,
biodiversity and the finite nature of planetary resources. It is a new
‘way of being’ in the sense evoked by Pierre Hadot who wrote that,
‘ancient philosophy was not a speculative occupation like it is today,
but a way of life (“a mode of life, an act of living, a way of being”)
(Findeli, 2001). Designers need to find a new way of life. In doing so
they must fundamentally re-examine the real needs of people
(individuals, socio-cultural communities) and the environment. A
discussion on well-being offers a useful starting point.


2.1 Well-being and design
The underlying assumption of ‘fast industrial design’ is that well-being
is governed almost exclusively by having access to or posessing
things, industrially manufactured goods. This is merely one view of well-
being, but it is one to which designers have, generally, subscribed
without question for the last 150 years. Design for Need, a short-lived
phenomenon of the late 1960s to early 1970s did raise some awkward
questions about the role of design in addressing well-being. In
particular, Papanek (1972) identified five areas of human need –
economic, psychological, spiritual, technical and intellectual – noting
that designers found these needs ‘more difficult and less profitable to
satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated wants inculcated
by fad and fashion’.

Typologies of human needs offer fertile ground for fresh design
thinking. Boyden (1971) examined mankind’s biological needs and
distinguished between “survival needs” and “well-being needs”.
Survival needs are focused on aspects of the environment that directly
affect human health (clean air/water, absence of pathogens/toxins,
opportunity for sleep/rest and so on). Failure to meet survival needs
results in death or illness. Well-being needs are indirect impacts on
health though their relationship to personal fulfillment, quality of life and
psychological health. Failure to meet well-being needs results in
psycho-social maladjustment and stress-related illnesses. It is perhaps
better to perceive Boyden’s needs as requiring co-existence to meet
our overall well-being. More detailed typologies include the oft-quoted
needs hierachy of Maslow (Fig 4) that focused on the idea of
developing human potential. Max-Neef’s Universal Human Needs (Fig.
5) and Jordan’s needs typology in relation to consumer products (Fig.
6) have received much less attention. Max-Neef also refers to
existential needs - having, being, doing, and interacting. Existential
needs provide fresh challenges for design and requires an holistic
approach compared to that elicited by the dominant existential need of
‘having’, which is such a dominant feature of contemporary cultural
production, consumption and its resultant materialism. Anthropocentric
well-being requires thinking beyond the aesthetic, beyond form and
function. Needs typologies challenge current design thinking.

Figure 4. Maslow’s needs hierarchy

Figure 5 Max-Neef’s Universal Human Needs

Figure 6 Jordan’s consumer needs hierarchy


2.2 Defining slow design
Slow design’ focuses on ideas of well-being. A manifesto for ‘slow
sustainable designers’ (Fuad-Luke 2003a) suggests subtle and
dramatic changes to everyday design practice (Fig. 7).

A sustainable slow designer will design to:

1. satisfy real needs rather than transcient fashionable or market-
driven needs.
2. reduce resource flows and environmental pollution by
minimizing the ecological footprint of products/service products.
3. harness solar income - sun, wind, water or sea power and
renewable materials
4. enable separation of components of products/service products
at the end-of-life in order to encourage recycling, reuse and
remanufacturing.
5. exclude the use of substances toxic or hazardous to human
and other forms of life at all stages of the product life cycle.
6. engender maximum benefits of well-being to the intended
audience
7. educate the client and the user by encouraging sustainable
literacy and graphicacy.
8. exclude innovation lethargy by re-examining original
assumptions behind existing products
9. dematerialise products into service products wherever there is
proven benefit in terms of indivdual, social and/or
environmental well-being
10. ensure physically, culturally, emotionally, mentally and
spiritually durable products
11. maximise products benefits to socio-cultural communities.
12. encourage modularity: to permit sequential purchases, as
needs and funds permit; to faciliate repair/reuse; to improve
functionality.
13. foster debate and challenge the status quo surrounding
existing products.
14. publish sustainable designs in the public domain for everyone’s
benefit, especially those designs which commerce will not
manufacture.
15. promote Design for Sustainability as an opportunity not a threat
to the status quo

Figure 7 A manifesto for sustainable slow designers

Further evolution of thinking around slow design was provided by an
unpublished study at UNITEC in Auckland, New Zealand (Fuad-Luke,
2003b). This study revealed that the term ‘slow design’ is multi-
layered and can refer to the process of design, the outcomes of design
and the overall philosophical approach. Several definitions emerge.

The guiding philosophical principle of slow design is to re-position
the focus of design on the trinity of individual, socio-cultural and
environmental well-being (Figure 8). Slower human, economic and
resource flow metabolisms are integral to the principle of well-being.
This encourages those engaged in design to: take a long view;
envisage slower rates of production and consumption; stimulate a
renewed joy in design (and its outputs); offer new scenarios for the
physical, emotional, mental and spiritual durability of design outputs;
celebrate diversity and pluralism; envisage slow as a positive socio-
cultural value; and, focus on the present rather than trying to design
the future.

Figure 8 The spheres of well-being of slow design

The process of slow design is comprehensive, holistic, inclusive,
reflective, considered, and permits evolution and development of the
design outcomes.

Slow design outcomes encourage a reduction in economic, industrial
and urban metabolisms, and hence consumption, by: serving basic
human needs; creating moments to savour and enjoy the (human)
senses; designing for space to think, react, dream, and muse;
designing for people first, commercialisation second; balancing the
local with the global and the social with the environmental;
demystifying and democratising design by re-awakening individual’s
own design potential; and catalysing social transformation towards a
less materialistic way of living.

There are several key premises for slow design:

The first premise is that human well-being relies on the well-being of
the earth’s ecosystems. Slow design recognises and embraces
concepts such as Design for Sustainability (DfS), sustainable
development, biodiversity, ecological footprints, resource management
and pollution control. Slow design differs from many historical design
movements in that it is not anthropocentric but recognises humankind
as part of larger biotic (living) systems whose own development
agenda’s don’t necessarily co-incide with those of humans! However,
slow design appreciates the subtleties of the human condition and
strives for human development of individuals and socio-cultural
communities. In this context the United Nations Development
Programme says ‘Human development is about much more that the
rise or fall of national economies. It is about creating an enironment in
which people can develop their full potential and lead productive,
creative lives in accord with their needs and interests’ (UNDP, 2003).
Mahbub ul Haq’s definition of human development goes further: “The
basic purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices. In
principle, these choices can be infinite and can change over time.
People often value achievements that do not show up at all, or not
immediately, in income or growth figures: greater access to
knowledge, better nutrition and health services, more secure
livelihoods, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying
leisure hours, political and cultural freedoms and sense of participation
in community activities. The objective of development is to create an
enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative
lives.” Slow design co-joins human development with the development
of the natural world. Slow design therefore considers a meta-
environment, a combination of the man-made and the natural, for
future sustainable development. The key foci of well-being for slow
design are therefore the well-being of the (man-made and natural)
environment, of socio-cultural communities and of the individual.
Needs typologies (Fig 8) assist in encouraging designers to ask the
right questions to meet identified anthropological needs. It will also be
necessary to develop a typology of needs for living ecosystems in
order to be truly inclusive in the slow design paradigm.

The second premise is that slow design must decouple itself from the
drivers of existing economic, technological and political thinking if it is
to deliver a new paradigm for design. It is entirely logical to predict
that appropriate economic models, technology and political models will
follow slow design outcomes since real needs will be met, rather than
those of the free market (often these market driven needs are
economically, politically, culturally and socially manipulated ‘wants’).

The third premise is that ‘slow design’ operates as an antidote to the
existing ‘fast design’ paradigm, a key aim being to slow down the
metabolism of anthropocentric activities that are damaging to mankind
and the environment. Manzini noted at Doors of Perception 7: Flow,
that, ‘The regeneration of the context of life, a relatively new phrase,
connects with the mainstream of our idea about what is well-being.
The mainstream of thinking has been that in order to live better, we
have to consume more. The problem being that, in consuming more,
we destroy our context of life.’ (Manzini, 2002). Slowing down the

metabolism of production and consumption challenges the dominant
political doctrine of economic growth being the prime mover of the
modern capitalist economy. But metabolism goes beyond money,
resources, goods and services. This metabolism includes ‘cognitive
overload’ a term used by Bonsieppe (1997) and a phenomenon
described as as early as 1881 as ‘neuraesthenia’ by George Beard in
his book, American Nervousness, originating from the increasing
tempo of life caused by the telegraph, railways and steampower (Kern,
1996).

The fourth premise is that decoupling the current models of the
industrial/consumer/information economies from design presents an
opportunity to explore ‘endurability’ and design. ‘Endurability’ is the
ability of designed objects, spaces and images that have persistent,
long-term socio-cultural relevance, which endure physically, spiritually,
mentally and emotionally. Balancing the physical with the spiritual,
mental and emotional has its roots in holistic eastern philosophies
including Buddism, Hinduism and Taoism.

These key four premises call for a politicisation of the design debate.
Such a politicisation represents a unique opportunity for designers (of
all creative disciplines) to enter centre stage in the debate on
sustainable development, a position currently dominated by NGO
activists, environmental lobbyists, governments and corporate trade
organisations.


2.3 The politicisation of slow design
Perhaps slow design can restore what fast industrial design has
eroded. Slow design is the spiritual, emotional and mental ‘art’ of
living, emphasising creativity and experiences, whereas fast industrial
design is the physical ‘form and function’ of living. Slow design should
not be the sole preserve of professional designers, rather it should
emerge as a more democratic process that involves cognition and
emotion, information and observation, the proven and the intuitive. It
should encourage a re-kindling of individual and socio-cultural
imagination that has atrophied with ready-made materialism. It should
not recognise any boundary between theory and practice or as
Bonsieppe (1997) puts it, ‘Theory renders that explicit which is already
implicity in practice as theory’.and goes on to note, ‘Design theory as
pensiero discorrente – as thinking against the grain, as critical
thinking – is rooted in the domain of social discourse and thus, in the
final instance, in that of politics, where the question is: In what sort of a
society do members of that society wish to live?’ By this Bonsieppe
means the broad political domain of society rather than the narrower
confines of professional politics or party politics. Slow design is
undoubtedly political and requires politicisation of those members of
the design profession and society who wish to engage in the theory
and practice of slow design. Thinking must shift from the
commodification of time, ‘time is money’, approach to a socio-cultural
re-valorisation of time, where slowness is seen as a positive rather
than negative value. Can the default speed induced by the
technological and economic imperatives of modernism and post-
modernism be replaced by a more eco-pluralistic array of speed
choices? If so, this could lead to a greater diversity of human
experiences and more sustainable patterns of living and working.
Slow design can encourage slower metabolisms and help deliver
equable choices to future generations.


2.4 Aesthetics, rituals and experiences
Re-valorisaton of time requires physical manifestations of slow design
that catalyse new sensorial aesthetics. Manzini (1996) set a challenge
to delegates at the Doors of Perception 4: Speed conference, ‘to
create a new aesthetic in relation to slowness and speed we have to
make another step inside the idea of speed. And we have for the
future movement what we call the sensorial speed. But the sensorial
speed is something related to risk control, related to a sort of aesthetic
perception, that we can create without any reference to the real
physical speed.’ Design has too long been dominated by the visual
senses by manipulation of the marketplace and by fashion or style.
Touch, smell, taste and sound have atrophied in the outpourings of the
design profession. Manifestations of slow design touch the senses
deeply, foster a revival of intuition over information and de-commodify
time. Such manifestations rigourously test the abilities of the designer
beyond the comfortable briefs of the consumer product.

Ritual, as practised in the old faiths, has largely been abandoned in
favour of the ritual pleasures of consumerism. Shopping is the new
religion, the shopping centres and malls the cathedrals to which the
populace flock. Consumerism has usurped thousands of years of
symbolic ritualism of natures’s seasons, religion, monarchy and
patriarchy. If design is to square up to contemporary issues then it
must ask questions about the role of design in creating new,
regenerative, rituals. Cline (1997) suggests that ecological ritual is
really about exploring the pleasure of mundane circumstances. The
objective of ecological ritual is to prolong time, to slow down the
greedy (consumers), to turn away from symbolic ritual towards
“pleasure-over-time” rituals. Cline asks, ‘What rituals of delay could
nourish us? Or have the “virtual realities” of film and television made
ever “real time” tedious, and therefore slowed up time unbearable?’
Cline quotes the American news commentator Roger Rosenblatt who
asks ‘How do we regain a world that is directly lived?’ and the
architectural critic Michael Benedikt who believes that ‘the direct
esthetic experience of the real’, as given by architecture, offers a
profound sense of reality.

In-built, ready-made experiences are a default condition of most
design outcomes, but the strategic goals of fast industrial design
paradigm is to tie experience to narrowly defined, commercially viable
designs. Resurgence of interest in experiential design shows a
longing for design to break free of commercial shackles.

Economists now talk of the ‘Experience Economy’ where consumer
goods and services are replaced by consumer experiences. It is
reasonable to expect that this new economy is also unlikely to deliver
experiences that do not meet strict economic criteria in their delivery.
Yet this vision is already constrained by commercial imperatives. As
such the Experience Economy is already a self-serving and self-edited
entity directed by the economists, politicians and technologists. In

contrast, slow design offers the possibilities of diversifying experiences
beyond the confines of economic, political and technological thinking.
It offers possibilities of extending experiences by considering the user
as designer. The user continues and adds to an evolving design
process. The user is the designer beyond the original design concept
and output with his/her own design and experiential. The processes of
design and design-make also offer direct experiential opportunities.
Interaction with the physical or virtual design output is an act of self-
identity and affirmation or, as Cline (1997) comments in regard to self-
built huts, ‘Here in a hut of one’s own, a person may find one’s very
own self, the source of humanity’s song’. Experiences are essential to
make sense of the world and oneself, so slow design provides a fresh
platform for experimentation.


3.1 Tradition
Traditional design embraces craft artefacts, vernacular buildings and
any designs evolving or mutating from such traditions. In many cases
traditional form and function shows a continuous evolution over
generations or centuries. Curraghs, a form of skin boat, found on the
west coast of Ireland have a lineage of 300 generations. Similarly,
traditional crafts such as basketry, which still flourish today in parts of
western Europe, (notably the Somerset Levels in the UK, Perigord in
France and in Poland) show diverse evolutionary paths to meet
contemporary socio-cultural needs. An inherent feature of craft
artefacts and vernacular buildings is the close relationship between the
locality of production and source of raw materials and the designer-
maker’s understanding of their materials and traditional technologies.
Traditional design is often integral to the locality, society, culture and
environment from which it originates and is therefore well placed to
serve the well-being of individuals, communities and the local
environment. It is often part of a closed-loop production system, waste
and products at the end of their useful lives being returned to nature,
re-used or recycled.

Process
Designer-maker, learned & evolved craft technologies

Outcomes

Craft objects or buildings eschewing fashion, standing well to the test
of time in physical or socio-cultural context.

Individual human well-being
Engagement with origins and nature of materials (the designer-maker);
knowledge of maker (for the user); sense of local or personal identity.

Socio-cultural well-being

Evolved production systems; social group identity; human scale
manufacturing or building; refers to local economy

Environmental well-being

Local materials; small markets; resource use efficiency

‘Herring cran’ log basket, David Mellor Design, UK – the Herring cran
was a standard weights and measures fish basket for the sale of
herring throughout the UK. Its lightweight but exceptionally strong
design derives from the open fitched work held firmly in a five-by-two
rod border. While herrings are no longer part of the staple British diet,
the cran has been adapted to create a log carrying basket.

Northern Fleet Chandelier, Deborah Thomas, UK – In the grand
homes of 17th, 18th and 19th century Europe cut glass chandeliers
signified the confidence and excess of imperialist empire-building
cultures. This hand-made chandelier has been lovingly assembled
from thousands of shards of broken glass, drilled and attached to a
wire frame. This is the tradition of the one-off. Here waste is food for
the next materialisation of raw materials. Each shard of glass is
formed and assembled, each bears the mark of its maker.

Black tents of the desert – the origin of these tents, found throughout
North Africa and the Middle East, dates back to the domestication of
sheep and goats in Mesopotamia. Loosely woven of goat, sheep,
camel and/or plant fibres, the loose weave creates a unique surface. It
absorbs infrared light as heat but does not release it to the interior air,
it provides fantastic insulation in cold nights and, due to the natural
greases in the fibres, sheds water. A temperature gradient of up to 30
degrees Celsius is not unusual between the outside and inside
environments. It is a transportable home which is readily stowed and
unpacked, and is erected by pegging the outer edge then inserting the
poles, starting at the outside and working towards the centre, and
fixing ropes over the poles to tension. This is traditional technology,
honed and perfected over thousands of years. It is also finely tuned to
resource availability, human needs and climatic extremes.

Studio in the West Country, UK by David Lea – Built in1985 this
building was a joint endeavour between Lea and his artist client.
Central to the concept is the idea of minimal separation between
architecture and nature. A bent wood frame is given form and
substance by infilling with straw insulation and rendering with cement
reinforced with chicken wire and cow hair. Topped with a fine
traditional thatch the whole structure resonates with modesty and
economy of materials yet it consciously strives to deliver well-being
and a sense of harmony to its occupants. Representing five hundred
years or more of European tradition it is not difficult to image similar
homes by the year 2500 since it is eco-efficient, easily constructed
with basic skills and responds to basic human aspirations.


3.2 Ritual
Artifacts and buildings for ritual purposes are familiar to antropologists
and are recorded in archaeological history. Perhaps today the design
of ritualised objects has migrated from the social arena to consumption
and mass-production where consumer products induce ritualised
habits. For example, it is possible to buy a wide variety of coffee
makers for the home kitchen. Each design encourages the consumer
to adopt certain habits and each design confers a social status with the
coffee cognascenti. Coffee making becomes a ritualised
performance. Casting an eye beyond consumption, which itself is a
ritual visit to the shopping complex or mall, there are designs that
embrace ritual beyond the commodified time of industrial production.
These designs offer diverse expressions of ritual and different time
experiences.

Process
Learned & evolved craft technologies used by designer-makers or
design and make by a community

Outcomes

Ritual: encouraged by ritualised objects, buildings or spaces.

Locates individual in a larger framework, community or society.
Participation encourages sense of self and community


Social bonding redefines larger purpose


Local or regional materials; respect for environment embedded in
rituals.

Bali offerings – Balinese culture is renown for effortlessly weaving
ritual into the tapestry of everyday life, so what could be a repetitive or
banal activity is elevated to sensual, spiritual and relgious joy. These
individually crafted offerings celebrate life’s richness in their aesthetic
composition of commonplace fruits and flowers. Constructed using
traditional skills these offerings remain unique to their maker. Design
in the context of each offering is ephemeral yet its rituals are socially
and culturally durable and contribute to individual and community well-
being.

The Draught by Pawel Grunert – serving as seating object and
sculpture this artefact celebrates the qualities of the wicker (willow)
rods which, by association, raise questions about our relationship to
nature. This is a chair for contemplation, reflection and dreaming. It
opens up the possibility of a daily ritual, a ‘time out’, a few moments of
non-consumption in an electronic information free zone.

New Grange, Ireland – Just once a year at dawn on the Summer
Solstice, this narrow passageway is flooded with sunlight and the heart
of this burial chamber is briefly warmed. This entire buried edifice is
designed for a sublime ritual moment, a reminder of cycles of time
made culturally less relevant by the commodification of time since the
Rennaisance onwards. Here is a sundial that only tells the time once
a year. Here is a deep experience by design.

Storytelling Pavillion, Cranbrook, USA by Dan Hoffman – Constructed
of a simple wooden frame covered with shingles, this ovoid space
offers a mini theatre for the art of aural tradition. With the advent of
the printing press and education of the masses to read, the telling of
stories as a means to entertain and communicate history, tradition,
and culture has faded. Television, radio, movies and the internet
provide our modern stories but they lack the intimacy of face-to-face
contact and discourse. Hoffman’s pavillion dedicates a space to the
ritual of telling a story. Inside this space there is complicity between
the storyteller and the listeners, a closeness borne of knowing that the
story and its telling happen once. Next time the story is repeated the
dynamics will shift, the story evolves, the pavillion reasunates to

different people.


3.3 Experiential
As talk of the Experience Economy gathers pace companies servicing
the consumer are exploring how to move from selling products to
selling experiences. In many cases this language disguises the fact
that companies wish to sell a service that manifests itself as a product
with various consumables or system products attached. In the context
of slow design, experiential has a different meaning. Experiential
objects, spaces or buildings permit the user(s) to apply his/her or their
own design abilities to affect the overall experience or outcomes. The
designer (and producer of the artifacts) is a catalyst in creating design
opportunities so that the user can re-design, re-configure and create
new experiences. Re-configurable modular design offers users the
ability to control the design experience although many examples of
slow design gravitate towards creating time for deeper, longer
experiences.

Process
Designer sets ‘initial’ design and opens a series of possibilities for the
user.

Outcomes

Object-user interaction, user as maker, user continues design or re-
design process

Encourages a more intense relationship between object/building/space
and user. Stimulates improved mental, emotional and spiritual sense
of well-being.


Stimulates social acts of making, interacting, modifying


Slowing consumption, resource use through maintaining socio-cultural
relevance of object/building/space

Felt 12 x 12 by FortuneCookies, Denmark – Velcro strips attached to
squares of felt encourage the user to experiment with new
configurations of clothing, to design their own ‘look’. Participation
encourages individual expression and places the task of fashioning
new clothes entirely back in the hands of the consumer, neatly
sidestepping the pitfalls of wearing last season’s look or clone-like
outfits from the high street. Each new garment, lovingly assembled,
creates fresh emotions, challenges the mind and caresses the body in
unexpected ways.

Funktion object by El Ultimo Grito – Moving the furniture around one’s
flat or house might not seem a liberating gesture but it is fundamentally
important to our feelings of identity, liberty and security which we seek
in our homes. As we arrange furniture within interior spaces, we are
instrumental in creating social environments. Repositioning a series of

modular Funktion objects sets the stage for the next social experience.
The object is instrumental in suggesting possibilities for interaction.

Testbed studio, Malmö, Sweden by Jonas Olsson and Fredrik
Magnusson – Testbed studio challenges the division line between
landscape elements and buildings. By offering a series of modular
components for basic elements (furniture, partitions, windows, spatial
frame), mediating elements (steel gabion cages infilled with rock, soil,
vegetation, wood) and landscape elements (live or artificial turf, rock,
seeds, flowers, garden gnomes) the home builder is given an operating
system within which to tailor his/her home to the building site. People
design their own experiences by personalising the building-site
interface. Testbed Studio is part of an ambitious and engaging project
initiated in 2000 called PARASITES (Prototypes for Advanced Ready-
made Amphibious Small-scale Individual Temporary Ecological
Houses), an architectural research and exhibition project initiated and
orgnised by Rien Korteknie and Mechthild Stuhlmacher (Stichting
Parasite Foundation Rotterdam) in collaboration with Bo01 Malmö, IBT
Rotterdam-Hoogvliet and Projectgroep Ijberg Amsterdam. It involved
over 24 architects throughout Europe.


3.4 Evolved
For the ‘Me’ generation, resulting from the 1960s/70s baby boom,
instantaneous satiation of desire has been a reality since acts of
consumption, through greater access to cash or credit, have never
been easier. The speed at which the desired object or experience can
be obtained can lead to an emotional high that is short-lived. This
cycle continues as the next consumer fix is sought. Consumer goods,
and even mass-produced housing, are the product of economic time
frames and market economies. Electronic computer equipment is a
classic example of a speeded-up, and artificial time frame, as Moore’s
Law dictates that computing power will double or prices halve every
eighteen months. In industrial production design has completely
divorced from other time frames. ‘Evolved design’ embraces the time
frames of nature. Its expression ranges from the very long view
(hundreds of generations) to the production of consumer goods where
the emotional ‘rush’ of desire and ownership is replaced with a deep
user:product relationship.

Process
Design over time, designer/nature interaction, designer as maker and
re-designer

Outcomes

Evolved design which measures man-nature interaction, such as a
weathered object.

Creates a personal journey of understanding


Celebrates pluralism in design and challenges existing perceptions


Minimal, natural processes; seeks greater understanding with
environmental connections

Tache Naturelle by Martin Ruiz de Azuz, Spain – This simple,
minimalist ceramic pot is not glazed in the factory. It gets its final
decorative coat by nature. The fired pots are hidden in secret natural
locations by the owner, a stream, a woodland or a mountainside. After
a season or several months or longer, the owner returns to salvage his/
her pot. Recorded on the sides of the pot is the passage of time and
natural interactions, staining, colouring, and burnishing. Each pot
represents change, each pot records those changes, mini-evolutions of
material surfaces.

Terra Grass Armchair by N Fornitore, Italy – As a living growing
structure this garden chair is constantly changing but its owner clips
and prunes the grass to temporarily arrest the process in a surface
finish and form. While the cardboard armature backfilled with soil
provides the framework to create the form, this design evolves in a
continuous dialogue between owner and nature.

Ecocathedral, Mildam,The Netherlands by Louis Le Roy – the
Ecocathedral is a tour de force of design process and systems. Le Roy
commenced this project over thirty years ago on a small piece of land
where he arranged for the local municipality to drop the occasional
lorry-load of bricks, stone and concrete from demolished buildings. He
re-arranges this raw material into a variety of built structures, terraces
and pathways. This is the beginning of a journey into working in space
and time, into self-organising systems and natural processes. His
arrangments of building blocks are held together by gravity, there is no
cement mortar. The living world can enter the interstices of his built
works to create his Ecocathedral, an environmental, landscape or
urban structure that is under constant spatial and temporal dynamic
development where people, plants and animals co-operate in a larger
natural process. This journey requires no drawings or plans. How can
you draw a process of 1,000 years, the timeframe Le Roy sees for his
project. Ecocathedral is the sum achievement of one person in space
and time. It represents a design culture free from the restrictions of
commercial, social, cultural or political imperatives. It celebrates
slowness.

Highline, New York, USA by Christopher Bribach and Carolyn F
Strauss – Most of the great cities around the world are intersected with
railway infrastructure, the transport phenomenon of nineteenth century
industrialisation. Within a couple of generations the availability of
cheap fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine made huge tracts
of railway lines redundant. Highline is a 3 kilometre section of
redundant elevated track. In response to a competition to find
contemporary uses for the site, Bribach and Strauss proposed a
‘participatory ecology of nature, local community and built form.’ They
envisioned living architecture, an organic organism whose form and
expression was managed by the local inhabitants. This vision
comprises ‘a flexible framework of giant timber bamboo sheathed with
a thin yet durable biopolymer membrane with intelligent, self-generating
properties.’ Here is the possibility of an environmentally regenerative
project which offers community focus and identity. Shape, scale, space
and growth opportunities become a collaborative process between
designers, inhabitants and nature.


3.5 Slowness
In today’s global culture slowness finds few commercial expressions.
Consumerism, by its nature, has a default fastness driven by
embedded economic, political and social paradigms. Perhaps, there
are commercial sectors where slowness plays an important part, such
as slowness found in tourism, and maybe an ultra-slowness in eco-
tourism. The beauty of slowness is, however, that there will always be
aspects of slowness beyond the realm of commercial dominance.
When ‘slow’ is seen as a positive ambition, and design is assigned or
takes on the task of creating slowness, then design assumes a political
dimension, becomes a catalyst for behavioural change and acts as a
counterweight to the aforementioned controlling paradigms

Process
Designer sets parameters to encourage slowness

Outcomes

User is presented with opportunities or mechanisms to slow down

User has different physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience;
stress reduction


Sets a slower pace for society; questions value of speed; encourages
opportunities for improved social interaction


Slows consumption of resources

Slow Rider, France by Olivier Peyricot – A single driver in an average
family saloon car can travel at speeds of up to 100mph. A remarkable
feat that our forebears would marvel at, but they would be less
impressed with the fact that only 2% of the fuel pumped into the tank
at the petrol station actually goes to moving the driver. Ninety-eight
percent of the petrol is lost in evaporation, incomplete combustion, as
heat, through transmission, wind resistance and road friction losses,
and moving the deadweight of the car. Peyricot questions our love of
speed as traffic in cities worldwide slows to a crawl that horse-drawn
carriages would have found boring. Slow Rider offers a sedate but
efficient form of transport. Take out the in-efficient car engine and any
associated, but unwanted, weight. Install a modest engine from a
domestic lawnmower and, hey presto, you can drive along at a
maximum speed of 15mph, enjoy the scenary or the occasional
daydream and still arrive in time for your rendevous.

Low Living, The Netherlands by Gonnie Constansia – Here’s a cocoon
and a cuddly cushion to soothe away our troubles. Spool knitting
techniques from the maritime craft heritage find new expression in
these tactile woolly objects. Turn off the heating, switch off our brain
and climb into the warm embracing sleeve. Escape information
overload. Enter dreamland.

Veloland Schweiz, Switzerland – Take a slow cycle on 4,000 miles

(6,300km) of a network of national, regional and local trails. Skip
between segments of the cycleway by leaving your bicycle at SBB
railway stations, jump on the train, alight at your destination and pick
up another hire bicycle. This integrated cycle-rail transport system
promises to de-accelerate users over weekend breaks or a summer
vacation. Plan and book your route online via Veloland’s web site and
enjoy detailed guides for selected routes. Seriously slow, fun and
healthy Veloland makes cycling easy.

Dunescape, New York, USA – In the swealtering heat of a New York
summer, just outside the temporary home of the Museum of Modern
Art emerged a lyrical wooden structure complete with water droplet
misters. Welcome to Dunescape a temporary landscape which
became a popular meeting place for stressed out city dwellers.
Welcome to the land of make believe, where transporation to exotic
climes is performed with the squinting of eyes. Here’s a space for
prevention not cure, a remedy for the malady of city life. Life’s a
beach.


3.6 Eco-efficiency
Slowing the consumption of the world’s resources has been on the
social and political agenda since the early 1960s yet population
growth, increased personal affluence and the global economy have
accelerated resource use to unsustainable levels. With the developed,
‘Western’ world consuming 80% of the earth’s resources to sustain
20% of the global population, there have been calls to improve the
efficiency of production processes by adopting ‘Factor X’ principles.
Factor 4, coined by the Rocky Mountain Institute in the USA, called for
a doubling of production on half the resources. Recognising that this
is only really dealing with the ‘Western’ world, the Wuppertal Institute
in Germany claimed a Factor 10 approach, a 90% reduction in
resource use, is needed to deliver an equable and global solution to a
sustainable pattern of production and consumption. As a paradigm,
slow design accepts the principles of Design for Sustainability, eco-
design and green design, and encourages design to adopt a ‘Factor X’
approach based on eco-efficient use of resources. This reduces
consumption of finite resources but also slows the production of
pollution and consequent habitat destruction and human health issues.

Process
Green design, eco-design and sustainable design principles. Designer
uses less materials and/or recycled materials and/or re-used objects
and/or low energy manufacturing and assembly. Cradle to cradle.
Outcomes

Resource use slowed, energy consumption reduced. New patterns of
living and work established.

Links individuals to their ecological footprint and satisfaction in
reducing it; improved health.


Challenges current perceptions and behaviour; shows qualty of life can
be maintained while de-coupling resource and energy use.


Slows consumption of resources and energy; significantly reduces
pollution, health hazards and environmental damage.

Kommode, Germany by Bär + Knell – Today’s palette of materials
using recycled constituents is diverse and suggests new avenues of
creativity to be explored. Working with the German authority,
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kunstoff-Recycling, which is responsible for
recycling over half a million tonnes of plastic annually under the Green
Dot system, designers Bär + Knell find new form and expression for
recycled HDPE sheet. Recycled plastics can save between 50-80% of
the energy costs of virgin plastics and slows down consumption of a
huge basket of chemicals and petroleum derivatives.

Fan Wing, Italy – slow aeroplanes might seem an awkward concept
bearing in mind early failures in the history of flight, but the Fan Wing

uses a revolutionary rotating leading edge that confers huge gains in
lift for very little power expenditure. This rotor delivers lift and thrust
enabling take off and landing from short runways. For just 100
horsepower a payload of 1 to 1.5 tonnes the FanWing is ideal for short-
haul flights of personnel and cargo for disaster relief, fire-fighting,
monitoring traffic jams, tourism or rescue missions. Quiet and fuel
efficient this aeroplane can cut emissions drastically and provide very
flexible operation for diverse needs. With a top speed of 37mph (60km/
h) this is gentle flying.

Airtecture, Germany by Festo – Transportable buildings have a long
and convincing history in architecture. Portable lightweight structures
are nothing unusual and find applications in the military, disaster relief
and industry. Airtecture is distinguished by its low weight (6 tonnes) to
provide 357 square metres of space but its most striking feature is the
‘Y’-shaped buttresses and the pneumatic muscles which support and
tension the whole building. When the wind blows the muscles contract
to resist the imposed deformation, so the building remains upright and
rigid. Easily deployed, this building offers an efficient solution in terms
of embodied energy and construction costs compared to the
expedient, short-life span commercial architecture found the world
over.

BedZED, UK by Bill Dunster Architects and Bioregional – Zero energy
housing developments are the ambition of many an aspiring green
architect. BedZED is one of those rare examples where this ambition
is delivered with quality mixed use and tenure live-work and housing
units. The Peabody Trust as client has delivered community and social
housing projects throughout London for over a century, so the
expectations of architecture to deliver a socio-cultural fabric were
high. The full tridos of sustainable design, environment, society and
economy, were brought to bear on the solutions and the impacts were

examined well beyond the confines of the development. One arena is
the transporation options. Mixed use development encourges part of
the community to work from home or within walking distance, existing
transporation networks can easily be reached by using the community
bicycle scheme and there is a pool of electric cars available. The full
gamut of eco-technologies from passive and active solar power to rain
harvesting, waste management and energy conservation mean that
BedZED should be ‘carbon neutral’ within a few years of operation – a
first for Europe, and an excellent case study of slow consumption.


3.7 Open Source Knowledge
As many designers would acknowledge, the majority of their work is
confined within the perspective and limitations set by commercial
imperatives and confidentiality. While any designer would accept a
brief with defined limits, much commercial work is ‘self-editing’ and has
reduced opportunities for collaboration in open source knowledge
frameworks. A key premise of slow design is that if it manages to
deliver outcomes that meet real needs, then an economic or business
model will readily follow. Common knowledge, as opposed to
proprietary or ‘owned’ knowledge, is a powerful tool for exploring new
paradigms. New networks of open source knowledge have flourished
on the internet. These offer a ready vehicle for exploring
manifestations of slow design.

Process
Proprietary knowledge and owned intellectual property rights are
relaxed to obtain the benefits of collaboration in an open source
learning environment.
Outcomes

Common knowledge is extended and collaborative working practices
help originate new design cultures and fresh thinking; creates a culture
of ‘design democracy’.

Individuals become repositories and givers of information to a larger
collective purpose; individual innate design and make capabilities are
harnessed


Celebrates knowledge as a common resources; helps build knowledge
communities.


Tends to create local and regional design solutions while helping
transfer these to other geographies

8 x 4 by tempo – Members of tempo, a network of sustainable
designers linked through the internet, runs several projects focused on
the concept of ‘design democracy’, the publication of copyright free
designs for use by private individuals to provide low cost, easy-to-
make, low environmental impact artefacts. ‘8 x 4’ is a resource which
provides cutting plans for domestic furniture and objects using
standards 8 x 4 feet sheets (plywood, formaldehyde free MDF,
blockboard and so on) with minimal offcuts or wastage. Cutting and
construction techniques are designed to utilise a typical household DIY
toolkit. The ‘8 x 4’ shelving is constructed with push fit joints, takes
about five minutes to assemble, packs flat for moving and supports
about 100 kilograms of books. The ‘8 x 4’ resource is continually
growing as members add new designs.

ENDCOMMERCIAL®, New York, USA by Scheppe Bohm Associates
– A remarkable photographic archive of 60,000 pictures from 1997 to
the present day records the richness and banality of everyday design
in New York city. The kind of design that rarely makes the magazines
save as backgrounds for hip fashion shoots. An unfolding ‘daily digital
slum’ by photographers Florian Böhm, Luca Pizzaroni and Wolfgang
Scheppe transfixes the viewer with urban scars and triumphs etched
into pavements, sprayed on walls, encoded into broken bicycles,
written on signs, revealed in people and places. This reseach project
examines design beyond the bright commercials, it digs deep into the
urban-human interface, and reveals the unfamiliar in the everyday.
Here the rhythmn of design is unhurried, the urgency of the
commercial imperative abandoned in favour of a broader cultural swell.

3.8 Technology
There is an implicit perception that technology, or the commercial
expression of technology, especially electronic technology, is speeding
up the pace of life. Yet interesting applications of technology are
emerging that are designed to slow human activities and create new
experiences. These applications are focusing on the interactive nature
of technology and asking how this can deliver moments of reflection
and rest.

Process
Information technology is harnessed to record, store, manipulate and
display data or use the data to create a physical manifestation of the
data.
Outcomes

Technology is harnessed to reveal new ways of organising data and
hence experiences.

The technology encourages reflective moments and mental rest by
experimenting with the writing and reading of data


Individual or collective participation enables social interaction and
common creativity


Focuses the audience on the real and virtual environments; potential
for zero energy interactive technologies

Slow Technology, Sweden by PLAY, Interactive Institute – Everyday
computer use focuses on how the technology increases the speed,
efficiency and amount of information handled. A group of researchers
at PLAY Interactive Institute are examining other aspects and

perspectives of information technology which they call Slow
Technology, that is technology aimed at promoting moments of
reflection and mental rest. New experiences are generated by
creating new acts of reading and writing using information technology.
This design space manifests itself in displays and devices in which are
embedded two levels of slowness. The first is the slow response of
the display output and the second is the time required by the viewer to
use, understand and reflect upon the environment of this design
space. One such manifestation is Lamp Foot, a lampshade
suspended just above the floor over a circle of dry autumn leaves.
Four small fans are fitted inside the shade, each projecting downwards
at different angles. The speed and direction of each fan can be set via
a microcontroller linked to a PC. Switching on the fans moves the
leaves into a one-off pattern. The ‘reading’ is seen as patterns of
leaves on the floor while the ‘writing exists as patterns of information
controlling the fans.


4. Slow design networks

Slow networking

An interesting feature of organisations involved in the ‘slow movement’
is a common percieved need to set up new cultural spaces to discuss
and practice slow design. Many organisations encourage cross-
disciplinary involvment from all types of creatives in the form of
projects, dialogues and events. Open source knowledge seems
another important common denominator. Discussions are emerging
around the globe. There are some common threads of philosophy,
such as the perception that ‘slow’ is a necessary counterbalance to
today’s ‘fast’ cultural norms, that ‘slow’ can’t exist without ‘fast’ and
that ‘slow’ is a positive socio-cultural value. In keeping with slow
philosphophy there is a healthy divergence of design concepts,
expressions, actions and outcomes. Here is a selection of rich, slow
thinking:

Slow
www.slowdesign.org

‘Slow’ creates active real and virtual objects and tools to encourage
slowing of individual’s metabolisms. Slow is a theoretical, conceptual,
collaborative and virtual space to extend the conversation about slow
design.

Tempo
www.tempodesign.net

tempo is a new cultural space and a network of professionals, students
and laypeople with expertise and/or interest in sustainable design.
The focus is on converting ideas and theory into practice and the
Manifesto for slow sustainble designers provides a guiding code.
tempo projects are sustainable design in action and include strong
synergies with the central tenets of slow design philosophy. A current
project examines the potential of domestic furniture and artefacts as
conveyors of ‘positive slowness’ and well-being.

SlowLab
www.slowlab.net

Carolyn F Strauss is the New York based founder of slowLab, ‘a
working design laboratory for research and prototyping of materials,
forms and experiences that engender consciousness, wellbeing and
harmony – in the lives of designers and end-users, the communities
they participate in, and the planet that we share’. Comprised mainly
of North American and European designers, architects and artists,

slowLab publishes dialogues around slow design, is growing a
database of projects and has a good list of books, articles and links.

Slow planet
www.slowplanet.org

Operated by the wonderfully named World Institute of Slowness,
Slowplanet’s mission is to ‘show the way to a life form that is based on
the good values coming with slowness, and consequently fight the
need for always being in a hurry.’ Slowplanet are involved in every
facet of everyday life, from business, shopping, travel, ideas, politics
and, naturally, design. Web surfers can sign up to the Manifesto
Slowdesign and Manifesto Slowbusiness or contribute by emailing
comments, ideas and suggestions.

Slow food
www.slowfood.com

Probably the mother of all slow activism, the Slow Food movement has
over 65,000 members in 42 countries. Emerging from a grass roots
desire to attenuate the spread of global corporate food businesses in
Italy, Slow Food has become a clarion call to those opposed to the
spread of these mono-cultural foods. It celebrates a quality of life
where diversity of food and drink is seen as essential for human and
environmental well-being.

Slow cities
www.slowcities.org

Thirty two towns and cities in Italy have signed up to the Slow Cities
Charter that focuses on maintaining and/or recreating local identity, a
sense of community, quality food production and environmental
improvements. Closely allied with the Slow Food movement, Slow
Cities is a way of thinking about a city’s future, engaging its inhabitants
and welcoming its guests.

Doors of Perception
www.doorsofperception.com

Amsterdam based Doors is well known for its challenging themed
conferences that gather the good and the great to debate pressing
cultural challenges. Two past conferences, ‘Speed’ in 1996 and ‘Flow’
in 2002, bear special relevance to the slow design debate and are well
worth a visit.

Thinkcycle
www.thinkcycle.com

Set up by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab,

Thinkcycle is an Open Collaborative Design network stimulating
information transfer and application of design solutions between
developing and developed countires using ICT. Open source know-
how and knowledge is a key ingredient in facilitating design evolution,
permitting feedback during the design process and involving diverse
stakeholders. Equity in the design process and outcomes is central to
Thinkcycle’s vision.

The Sloth Club
www.slothclub.org

Born out of a rescue mission by eco-tourists to save a sloth from a
cooking pot in the Equadorian jungle, the aim of The Sloth Club is to
‘be engaged in what we call ‘Sloth Business’, that is, ecolgically and
socially concsientious business’. This means shifting from the culture
of ‘more, faster, tougher’ to’ less, slower, non-violent’. The Sloth
provides the perfect case study and metaphor – it is low-energy
mammal, forms strong symbiotic relationships with its native flora and
fauna, including blue-green algae and insects in its fur, and it
encourages recycling of nutrients. The Club is aiming to establish a
santuary for the sloth in Equador and raise funds to protect vital habitat.

The Long Now Foundation
www.longnow.org

As lives are engulfed in feelings of urgency and immediacy, The Long
Now Foundation wants to encourage us to step back and examine the
long-term process of change that we are participating in everyday.
The organisation is in the process of constructing a clock that will keep
time for 10,000 years (the Long Now). This organisation’s vision
challenges the zeitgeist, ‘time is money’.


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