Green Design and Development

Green Design as Appropriate Technology

While much design and development has proceeded without consideration of its environmental basis and consequence, the growth of environmental concern, particularly from the [Page 1370]1960s and 1970s, saw growing attention to the level of environmental resource extraction and the impacts of human activities on the environment. Geographers were heavily involved in the formation of means to assess levels of resource use and environmental impacts and in consideration of the meaning of terms such as resource, environment, and nature. Other professionals, including engineers, planners, economists, and architects, as well as environmental activists, began to consider the environmental resource and impact dimensions of object and building design and construction.

In 1973, for instance, the economist Ernst Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful, a book that criticized existing models of economic development for fostering reliance on Western technology and thereby heightening dependency relationships. Schumacher argued that Western technologies were often highly inappropriate for many poor/developing/underdeveloped countries, both socioeconomically and environmentally. Schumacher advocated the development of more appropriate forms of technology, which he described as being intermediate technologies, lying somewhere between the technologies of the developing and the developed world in terms of capital and labor intensities. Schumacher sought to put his ideas into practice through the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action), and they were also influential within organizations such as the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth, Wales. Schumacher's ideas were picked up by designers such as Victor Papanek and Gui Bonsiepe, who were influential in the “design for need” movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were also influential in development studies, where they were connected to, and critiqued within, debates over the meaning of development.

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