What is Sustainable Design?

Traditionally, a term 'sustainable design' was used as a synonym of 'green design', 'eco-design' or 'design for environment'. Now, it has a new, broader meaning. Sustainable design aims to deliver profits on the 'tripple bottom line'. It still generates financial profit, but also benefits the environment and the society.

While discussing the issue, it is extremely important to understand that sustainable design does not apply to designing products in separation from the environment they are being used in. Sustainable design refers to designing entirely sustainable systems: a product, the way it is produced and used, and what happens to it afterwards.

Briefly, sustainable design may be defined as the design of flexible systems that can be sustained indefinitely. Sustainable product design, on the other hand, is the design of products that aid or permit sustainability of the systems in which they operate.

These definitions can be simplified further to say that "sustainable design is good design", or even better, "good design is sustainable design".

The basics of the sustainable design are very well explained by Tom Greenwood in the video I found on the ESP Design website. To illustrate the concept, Greenwood is using three examples:

  • ebay (an online marketplace for second hand goods);
  • Onzo (home energy use monitoring system);
  • Freitag (fashionable bags made out of used truck tarpaulins, car seat belts, airbags and bicycle inner tubes).


Inspired by Nature

Personally, I am very much in favour of sustainable design. But what I find even more inspiring is 'biomimicry' (or 'biomimetics') - an emerging discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems.

Biomimicry promotes the study and imitation of nature’s remarkably efficient designs. I was amazed to realize what nature has to offer: 3.8 billion years of field research, testing and prototyping as well as a successful adaptation of nature's designs in 10-30 million species living on Earth now. In my eyes, this is truly green and sustainable design!

There are a number of organizations that advocate the nature's inspiring solutions. Biomimicry Institute promotes learning from and then emulating natural forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable and healthier human technologies and designs. It brings together scientists, engineers, architects and innovators to create natural and eco-friendly technologies fit for the future.

The Biomimicry Guild is the only innovation company in the world to use a deep knowledge of biological adaptations to help designers, engineers, architects, and business leaders solve design and engineering challenges sustainably.

Ask Nature is an online inspiration source for the biomimicry community. In here, I have learned that butterflies exhibit vibrant colors and stay clean using nano-scale structures on their wings. Designers and engineers have emulated this strategy to create self-cleaning coatings, fabrics and paints, and electronic display screens.

I also came across this long but extremely interesting video featuring Janine Benyus from the Biomimicry Institute speaking at TED conference about 12 sustainable design ideas inspired by nature. These include:
  • self-assembly,
  • CO2 as a feedstock,
  • solar transformations,
  • the power of shape,
  • quenching thirst,
  • metals without mining,
  • green chemistry,
  • timed degradation,
  • resilience and healing,
  • sensing and responding,
  • growing fertility,
  • creating conditions conductive to life.


I found the above examples of biomimetic design extremely inspiring. I believe that this is the answer to most of our environmental and human problems. And beneath the advanced science and engineering, there is a very simple principle. Humans might be the dominant species on Earth now, but human history is very short as compared to the history of the planet. As seen on The 11th Hour, the planet is not in danger, neither is the life on the planet. But human existence on it is threatened because we see ourselves somehow in separation from the rest of the ecosystem. We need to develop sustainable ways of inhabiting the planet in order to provide a safe environment to live in for the future generations. And, in my opinion, it is best to use the 3.8 billion years of experience nature has to offer. I strongly believe that the only way to sustainability is to learn directly from nature and as designers we have the responsibility to do so.