Sustainable Design for Small Spaces

Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability and also aimed at improving the health and comfort of occupants in a building. Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and well-being of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments. (USDA National Agriculture Library)

Theory

The sustainable design intends to "eliminate negative environmental impact through skillful sensitive design". Manifestations of sustainable design require renewable resources and innovation to impact the environment minimally, and connect people with the natural environment. (EPA Environmental Resources)

"Human beings don't have a pollution problem; they have a design problem. If humans were to devise products, tools, furniture, homes, factories, and cities more intelligently from the start, they wouldn't even need to think in terms of waste, contamination, or scarcity. Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse, and pleasure." (University of Minnesota Extension)

Design-related decisions are happening everywhere daily, impacting "sustainable development" or provisioning for the needs of future generations of life on earth. Sustainability and design are intimately linked. Quite simply, our future is designed. The term "design" is here used to refer to practices applied to the making of products, services, as well as business and innovation strategies — all of which inform sustainability. Sustainability can be thought of as the property of continuance; that is, what is sustainable can be continued. (Penn State Extension)

The concept of diminishing returns, commonly illustrated by the 'S' curve in the technology life cycle, refers to the reduced incremental benefit gained from continued investment or effort. In fields such as industrial ecology and life cycle assessment, this concept is associated with the finite useful life of systems. Management literature suggests that when traditional approaches reach diminishing returns, it may prompt organizations to reassess their strategy and explore alternative opportunities. (USDA National Agriculture Library)

Economically and socially sustainable design

Environmentally sustainable design is most beneficial when it works hand-in-hand with the other two counterparts of sustainable design – the economic and socially sustainable designs. These three terms are often coined under the title "triple bottom line." In addition to financial terms, value can also be measured in relation to natural capital (the biosphere and earth's resources), social capital (the norms and networks that enable collective action), and human capital (the sum total of knowledge, experience, intellectual property, and labor available to society). (EPA Environmental Resources)

In some countries the term sustainable design is known as ecodesign, green design or environmental design. Victor Papanek, embraced social design and social quality and ecological quality, but did not explicitly combine these areas of design concern in one term. Sustainable design and design for sustainability are more common terms, including the triple bottom line (people, planet and profit). Advocates like Ecothis.EU campaign urge all three considerations be taken into account when designing a circular economy. (University of Minnesota Extension)

Aspects of environmentally sustainable design

According to Jonathan Chapman of Carnegie Mellon University, emotionally durable design reduces the consumption and waste of natural resources by increasing the resilience of relationships established between consumers and products." Essentially, product replacement is delayed by strong emotional ties. In his book, Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences & Empathy, Chapman describes how "the process of consumption is, and has always been, motivated by complex emotional drivers, and is about far more than just the mindless purchasing of newer and shinier things; it is a journey towards the ideal or desired self, that through cyclical loops of desire and disappointment, becomes a seemingly endless process of serial destruction". Therefore, a product requires an attribute, or number of attributes, which extend beyond utilitarianism. (Penn State Extension)

According to Chapman, "emotional durability" can be achieved through consideration of the following five elements: (USDA National Agriculture Library)

As a strategic approach, "emotionally durable design provides a useful language to describe the contemporary relevance of designing responsible, well made, tactile products which the user can get to know and assign value to in the long-term". According to Hazel Clark and David Brody of Parsons The New School for Design in New York, "emotionally durable design is a call for professionals and students alike to prioritise the relationships between design and its users, as a way of developing more sustainable attitudes to, and in, design things". (EPA Environmental Resources)

Because standards of sustainable design appear to emphasize ethics over aesthetics, some designers and critics have complained that it lacks inspiration. Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Frank Gehry has called green building "bogus", and National Design Awards winner Peter Eisenman has dismissed it as "having nothing to do with architecture". In 2009, The American Prospect asked whether "well-designed green architecture" is an "oxymoron". (University of Minnesota Extension)

Applications

Applications of this philosophy range from the microcosm — small objects for everyday use, through to the macrocosm — buildings, cities, and the Earth's physical surface. It is a philosophy that can be applied in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, urban planning, engineering, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, fashion design and human-computer interaction. (Penn State Extension)

Sustainable design is mostly a general reaction to global environmental crises, the rapid growth of economic activity and human population, depletion of natural resources, damage to ecosystems, and loss of biodiversity. In 2013, eco architecture writer Bridgette Meinhold surveyed emergency and long-term sustainable housing projects that were developed in response to these crises in her book, "Urgent Architecture: 40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World." Featured projects focus on green building, sustainable design, eco-friendly materials, affordability, material reuse, and humanitarian relief. Construction methods and materials include repurposed shipping containers, straw bale construction, sandbag homes, and floating homes. (USDA National Agriculture Library)

The limits of sustainable design are shrinking. Because growth in goods and services consistently outpaces gains in efficiency. As a result, the net effect of sustainable design has simply been to improve the efficiency of rapidly increasing impacts. This problem is not solved by the current approach, which focuses on the efficiency of delivering individual goods and services. To address these limitations, scientific researchers propose methodologies. For example, the Design for Strong Sustainability (DfSoSy) methodology integrates ecological balance, social equity, and systemic changes into the design process, emphasizing system robustness over mere efficiency improvements. The fundamental dilemmas are as follows: the increasing complexity of efficiency improvements; the difficulty of implementing new technologies in societies built around old ones; the fact that the physical impacts of delivering goods and services are not localized, but are distributed across economies; and the fact that the scale of resource use is growing and not stabilizing. (EPA Environmental Resources)

Sustainable architecture is the design of sustainable buildings. Sustainable architecture attempts to reduce the collective environmental impacts during the production of building components, during the construction process, as well as during the lifecycle of the building (heating, electricity use, carpet cleaning etc.) This design practice emphasizes efficiency of heating and cooling systems; alternative energy sources such as solar hot water, appropriate building siting, reused or recycled building materials; on-site power generation - solar technology, ground source heat pumps, wind power; rainwater harvesting for gardening, washing and aquifer recharge; and on-site waste management such as green roofs that filter and control stormwater runoff. This requires close cooperation of the design team, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages, from site selection, scheme formation, material selection and procurement, to project implementation. This is also called a charrette. Appropriate building siting and smaller building footprints are vital to an environmentally sustainable design. Oftentimes, a building may be very well designed, and energy efficient but its location requires people to travel far back and forth – increasing pollution that may not be building produced but is directly as a result of the building anyway. Sustainable architecture must also cover the building beyond its useful life. Its disposal or recycling aspects also come under the wing of sustainability. Often, modular buildings are better to take apart and less energy intensive to put together too. The waste from the demolition site must be disposed of correctly and everything that can be harvested and used again should be designed to be extricated from the structure with ease, preventing unnecessary wastage when decommissioning the building. Another important aspect of sustainable architecture stems from the question of whether a structure is needed. Sometimes the best that can be done to make a structure sustainable is retrofitting or upgrading the building services and supplies instead of tearing it down. Abu Dhabi, for example has undergone and is undergoing major retrofitting to slash its energy and water consumption rather than demolishing and rebuilding new structures. (University of Minnesota Extension)

Engineering design

Sustainable engineering involves designing or operating systems to use energy and resources at a rate that does not exceed the environment's capacity to regenerate them. The objective is to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own. Applications include water supply, waste management, pollution control, and ecological restoration. (Penn State Extension)

Achieving a healthy and aesthetic environment for the occupants of a space is one of the basic rules in the art of Interior design. When applying focus onto the sustainable aspects of the art, Interior Design can incorporate the study and involvement of functionality, accessibility, and aesthetics to environmentally friendly materials. The integrated design of the indoor environment is essential and must be part of the integrated design of the entire structure. (USDA National Agriculture Library)

Improving the overall building performance through the reduction of negative impacts on the environment is the primary goal. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, where the concentrations of some toxins and impurities are frequently two to five times higher than they are outside. Sustainable interior design solutions strive to create truly inspirational rooms while simultaneously enhancing indoor air quality and mitigating the environmental impact of interior design procedures. This requires interior designers to make ethical design choices and include environmental concerns into their work, as interiors and the environment are closely intertwined. (EPA Environmental Resources)

Reducing consumption of non-renewable resources, minimizing waste and creating healthy, productive environments are the primary objectives of sustainability. Optimizing site potential, minimizing non-renewable energy consumption, using environmentally preferable products, protecting and conserving water, enhancing indoor environmental quality, and optimizing operational and maintenance practices are some of the primary principles. An essential element of Sustainable Building Design is indoor environmental quality including air quality, illumination, thermal conditions, and acoustics. Interior design, when done correctly, can harness the true power of sustainable architecture. (University of Minnesota Extension)

Sustainable technologies

Sustainable technologies use less energy, fewer limited resources, do not deplete natural resources, do not directly or indirectly pollute the environment, and can be reused or recycled at the end of their useful life. They may also be technology that help identify areas of growth by giving feedback in terms of data or alerts allowed to be analyzed to improve environmental footprints. There is significant overlap with appropriate technology, which emphasizes the suitability of technology to the context, in particular considering the needs of people in developing countries. The most appropriate technology may not be the most sustainable one; and a sustainable technology may have high cost or maintenance requirements that make it unsuitable as an "appropriate technology", as that term is commonly used. (Penn State Extension)

"Technology is deeply entrenched in our society; without it, society would immediately collapse. Moreover, technological changes can be perceived as easier to accomplish than lifestyle changes that might be required to solve the problems that we face." The design of sustainable technology relies heavily on the flow of new information. Sustainable technology such as smart metering systems and intelligent sensors reduce energy consumption and help conserve water. These systems are ones that have more fundamental changes, rather than just switching to simple sustainable designs. Such designing requires constant updates and evolutions, to ensure true environmental sustainability, because the concept of sustainability is ever changing – with regards to our relationship with the environment. A large part of designing sustainable technology involves giving control to the users for their comfort and operation. For example, dimming controls help people adjust the light levels to their comfort. Sectioned lighting and lighting controls let people manipulate their lighting needs without worrying about affecting others – therefore reducing lighting loads. (USDA National Agriculture Library)

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most important thing to know about Sustainable design?

The most important factor is starting with an honest assessment of your current situation and available resources. Effective implementation depends on matching the approach to your specific context — climate, scale, community, and goals all matter. (EPA Environmental Resources)

Conclusion

Sustainable Design for Small Spaces represents an important dimension of the larger shift toward sustainable, ecologically grounded ways of living. Whether you are just beginning or deepening existing practice, the resources and knowledge are increasingly accessible. The steps taken today — however modest — contribute to a compounding body of change that matters both locally and globally. (University of Minnesota Extension)

Additional reference: Wikipedia — Sustainable design