Review by Penny Craswell
How to Create Things for the World Sustainably
Sarah K, Supercyclers (Near Future Publishing), 280 pp hardback, RRP $90.00
Of all the “wicked problems” of the world, the problem of too much stuff is one of the most difficult to solve – and it is one that falls directly into the lap of designers. Designer, educator and author Sarah K is one person who has taken on the problem as a calling, dedicating her career to teaching, exhibiting, designing and consulting on the topic.
In her book How to Create Things for the World Sustainably, Sarah K tells the story of how she came to put sustainability at the centre of design – that “flip the switch” moment that shocked her into dedicating her life to the cause. “I think it’s important to acknowledge this first shift in thinking, so that we can recognise in ourselves that we are moving from the mindset of the old paradigm into the new one.”
For Sarah, it was when she moved to Tasmania to open a design shop in 2006 and, due to the location of her store, witnessed up to a dozen semi-trailers transporting huge felled trees per day. “Sometimes with just a section of one whole log on the truck, cut into a quarter or an eighth… so big that it could only be very old growth,” she says. Around the same time she learned of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That was enough.
In 2010, Sarah moved back to Sydney to tackle the problem, forming Supercyclers with Sydney designer Liane Rossler. Following their first project “Ghostwares” made of recycled plastic, Sarah instigated and curated a number of exhibition in Milan, starting with “The Other Hemisphere” in 2011 and “SOS (supercycle our souls)” in 2012. Since then, she has continued to design products and curate exhibitions (see this timeline), but has also expanded her reach, consulting with clients and helping them solve their sustainability dilemmas (often not in the way they had in mind), and developing and delivering a sustainable design masterclass.
But the book is more than just Sarah’s story, it also has a workbook for working through problems and a number of lengthy case studies from designers around the world. She outlines all the facets of sustainable design in her “Brief History of Sustainable Design Concepts” which has sections on material, conceptual, behavioural and systems approaches.
But most interesting is Sarah’s own way of thinking about sustainability – one idea that struck me is that objects are actually events: “every object is the sum total of its past, present and future”. Another is the idea of the earth as client. And, most tantalisingly, is the afterward, which explores the ultimate design act: making nothing. When we met up for coffee, Sarah promised that there is more on this project to come – the presence of the absence. It will be fascinating to see what this entails. In the meantime, this is the book that all designers need to own.