EcoLabs: Teach-In Proposal

Teach-IN: A tool for embedding ecological literacy in design education

Design education must move quickly to respond to urgent environmental pressures. Climate change is a problem that will require a response from all sectors of society. Design must embrace its unique ability to facilitate change by engaging with the emergent concept of ecological literacy, communicate key concepts and help initiate a wide-reaching social learning process. This paper examines the model of the ‘teach-in’ as a tool for embedding ecological literacy into design education.

Ecological literacy is an understanding of ecological systems and an awareness of how society operates within natural imperatives. Ecological literacy creates a conceptual basis for integrated thinking about sustainability. Informed by ecological systems new foot-printing and life cycle analysis tools can assess the environmental impact of a system, design, process or product. The One Planet Living™ model developed by the WWF offers a clear vision of living within the planet’s carrying capacity. Meanwhile Cradle to Cradle design processes create methodologies for a zero waste economy. These new tools and processes have the capacity to transform unsustainable systems into systems for One Planet Living™. Designers have an important role to play in making these tools, processes & principles meaningful to diverse audiences and integrating these concepts into the public arena. We have the capacity to create systems that will allow us to live within the ecological limits of the earth’s ecosystem. Design education must work to quickly to build sustainable products and processes into our system. It must also disseminate the ‘know how’ and information for the transition to sustainable One Planet Living™. Equally important, the design industry must help to generate the will and the desire to make this transition happen by making sustainability the attractive option.

This paper proposes a massive social learning project within design education based on the example of the ‘2010 Imperative: A Global Emergency Teach-in ’. The teach-in was held in February 20, 2007 at the New York Academy of Science, and organized by Architecture 2030 (led by architect Edward Mazria). The website claims that the event reached a quarter million people from 47 different countries with the interactive webcast. The webcast featured presentations by climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, Edward Mazria, and Arup architect Chris Luebkeman who spoke to an auditorium full of students at the Academy. The event was broadcast live to other groups of students and also professionals in hundreds of architectural institutions. On this day ‘The 2030 Challenge ’ and the ‘2010 Imperative ’ were issued as specific strategies to transform education for the built environment. These strategies were designed to immediately mobilize the architectural design industry to stabilize emissions in the building sector, and then to set about to reverse emissions to acceptable levels over the next ten years. The paper will study the effectiveness of the 2010 Imperative teach-in as an example of social innovation that engaged thousands architecture students with the threat of climate change.

Embedding ecological literacy in the architectural industry was a central strategy in the 2010 Imperative Teach-in. The project websites states:

To successfully impact global warming and world resource depletion, it is imperative that ecological literacy become a central tenet of design education. Yet today, the interdependent relationship between ecology and design is virtually absent in many professional curricula. To meet the immediate and future challenges facing our professions, a major transformation of the academic design community must begin today. To accomplish this, The 2010 Imperative calls upon this community to adopt the following: Beginning in 2007, add to all design studio problems that: “the design engage the environment in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuel.” By 2010, achieve complete ecological literacy in design education. By 2010, achieve a carbon-neutral design school campus.

This focus on ecological literacy is equally important in other design disciplines. Ecological literacy is a powerful concept that demands that we consider ecological systems and an awareness of how society operates within natural imperatives as an educational staple. This is a concept for patterning thoughts, organizing information and eventually behaviour. It is a cognitive faculty that our educational systems have tragically failed to instil. American educator David Orr describes this failure as a;

sin of omission and commission. Not only are we failing to teach the basics about how the earth works, but we are in fact teaching a large amount of stuff that is simply wrong. By failing to include ecological perspectives in any number of subjects, students are taught that ecology is unimportant (Orr 1992, 85).

Educators must address this lack of ecological literacy with urgency. Design education has a responsibility to address the shortcomings in its current methodology as designers could be of great value to the transition - if they decide to chart new territory. Educators must build awareness and methodologies in design to address social and environmental problems holistically - rather than the ‘patchwork solutions on a larger pattern of disorder’ (Orr 2002, 11) that dominates so much of the industry presently. This paper will explore in more depth how ecological literacy is fundamental to support ‘a rapid transition to a more restrained and elegant condition called sustainability’ (Orr 2002, 79).

The teach-in model has been proven to work, and has already been copied by a much larger teach-in. The ‘Focus the Nation ’ event on January 31 2008 was broadcast to 1,700 institutions and universities in America (according to their website). The teach-in is an effective model for dissemination of critical information in response to the climate crisis. This paper will explore its use in the past and propose that a similar project be conducted by the Cumulus group. The process is initiated by first building a network though a web 2.0 site and then by staging an event that will be broadcast live on-line to groups at all participating colleges and institutions, thereby creating a massive collective learning experience. The event itself will have three parts: 1) First, the main event is the live internet broadcast panel discussion featuring scientists, academics and cultural leaders who present a lecture and discussion on climate change and systemic change. 2) The following day each institution turns its full attention to the issue; faculty, students & staff focus on how each design discipline can work towards a transformation of our system and a pathway to lowering carbon emissions. The project would encourage each institution to run a program of events over the course of the day focusing on how to initiate projects to bring emissions down - locally and globally. 3) Finally, the event will follow the example of the 2010 Imperative by broadening the stated goals (listed earlier as the 2030 Challenge and the 2010 Imperative) to include all design disciplines represented by college members.

We are at the precipice of an unprecedented ecological crisis. This is not conjecture, not a random theory, but quite shockingly now the consensus opinion of the world’s leading scientists (IPCC Report). As weather systems are already starting to seriously lose their stability, it is fundamental that educational establishments show some leadership. We must harness the skills and vision within the disciplines to address global environmental challenges. Scientists have delivered and ultimatum: we must change the trajectory of carbon emissions within the decade to avoid run away climate change. Designers have a vital role to play in navigating this transition, but they must start to engage with this information. We must examine how our industry can be used to address this societal level challenge. We have no time to waste – and this paper will propose that a teach-in with a focus on embedding ecological literacy in design education is a necessary step to engage the design industry with the current situation.

References
IPCC. 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orr, David. 1992. Ecological Literacy. Albany: State of New York Press.
Orr, David. 2002. The Nature of Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press.