Community is a group of people gathering around a focus, idea, game, religion, growing food.

Communities are those that share their experiences together, that live on common ground, share the same problems, and will do things together to create solutions.

The communities we create now will only become beneficial for us in the future, as the more people you have focused on similar ideas, the better the living situations will be within these communities. 

As we are moving ever closer to global warming, things will change dramatically for us. We will need to create better systems of growing food, saving water, trading, saving the energy we have. The ideas of permaculture could very well help us move in this direction of sustainability. Permaculture is a design system which creates better ways to  manage our bad consumer systems, and make them into things which work under more natural systems.

We have the potential to turn rubbish tips, into areas where food could be grown. Just think of any place which is currently not being using for anything positive, like an area that slopes down, for when it may rain, all the water would fall into the bottom ends of the slope to trap the water; a perfect place to grow food.

Like i had mentioned in the my previous lecture notes on cuba; perhaps the only way for us to be self sustainable, is to have everything taken from us, and to start from scratch.




1-Natures food growth patterns go by its seasons, where certain foods will grow naturally. But due to our consuming habits, we force nature to grow things all year round, which doesn’t do any good for the food or the environment.

2-We have the potential to turn anyplace, that is currently somewhat wasteful, into a place that could provide food or other resources.

3-If we changed the way we consume, and learned to consumer allot less, countries wouldn’t need to build massive unsustainable power stations in order to provide the things we need to live.

This lecture by Keith Robertson is about the construction of theory and philosophy, and how these can evaluate and distinguish the past and present. 

“Theory= a set of facts, propositions, or principles analysed in their relation to one another and used used in science to explain ideas and concepts”

Theory is driven by Philosophy, where theory isn’t necessarily the truth, it is an argument, thats tries to take up multiple angles on things to explain situations.

Micheal Foucault – a french theorist who studies many areas, one was “Madness and Civilization”

Some sketches bellow describe some of his ideas, and focuses.

1-Insanity in old times was looked upon as something unique, and people seemed to look at it as a good phenomenon, now insanity is something thats stigmatised.

2- Although society’s ideas were that punishing people would return them to “the norm”, Foucault’s ideas of discipline and punish were that due to the general thinking of these people, they would generally not change.

3-Out of any place in the world, America has the most people in prison.

A lecture by Craig Austin on design thinking.

• Edward de Bono

Someone who was thought to have invented “lateral” thinking.

But did not invent the word, he made it up.

The brain is designed to make “self organizing” patterns

• Ways of thinking

    In logical thinking, it mainly works with FACT

    Whereas “design thinking” has to work with “lateral” thinking.

• Past based thinking

Analysis and judgment based thinking

• NEW thinking

Generative, (creative) thinking.

The film “The power of community” absolutely astonished me. This was a lecture that featured a film about “the special period” of Cuba. For those who don’t know what this is, it was a period where Cuba had lost around 80% of its wealth due something that we call “peak oil”. As at 2000, it was predicted that by this stage, that the world would used up half of its oil supplies.

Due to the collapse of many nations, trade for services and goods had depleted for many country’s. Cuba was one of these country’s, once reliant on surrounding country’s to supply food, oil. With the supply cut short of oil being transported into Cuba, that meant all their energy needs were cut short as well.

Transport become a massive issue, as there was no money or oil for that matter to produce diesel or gasoline, to run these transports, which meant a lot of unemployment for people not being able to get to work. Housing areas lost power constantly, where black outs would last for long periods of time. Farmers reliant on their tractors and machines, were no longer able to fuel them or find spare parts for them.

From this Economic crisis came good though. A county once dependant on importation of goods, became self sufficient in growing food, and developed ways to make money by food trade, as well as having lots of local trade within their community’s where people would simply “swap” goods.

Everything that was once reliant on pollutants, Cubans resourced natural, sustainable ways to farm, using better non chemical pesticides and fertilizes.

In terms of our ways of living, Cubans due to this economic crisis now consume 8% of what a regular American does.

We should all be taking example of this and be following this way of sustainable living, for humans and the world to survive.  

Lecture by Professor Alan Whitfield, National Institute of Design Research.

One of the best lectures i have seen. Based on the evolution of the human brain, and how it has survived the primitive ages to the present day. In many ways, our brains haven’t really changed all that much, we still think generally the same as we did back in Savanaah – the ancestral homeland. “Can i eat it, will it eat me, can i mate with it  

 As humans, we analysis things in particular ways, some of which is done before we can act, the brain already acts for us. This part of the brain is called the “Amygdala”. The brain has faster reacting speed to a threat than to pleasure, to quickly label an object as something “good” or something “bad”.

 In terms of our instinctual memories:

We have:

 • Poor taste memory

• Poor smell memory

• Poor feel memory

• Good Visual memory’s

It also seems to work to this very day that our instinctual way of surviving, is to from social groups. If you by your self as an individual, you were more likely to be targeted as prey, and be eaten. Today, although there Isn’t such threats that we have to worry about, we still form social groups. Groups which may all follow particular trends, or social patterns.

One question I have to ask is: Why do these social groups of ours have to follow trends?

Is it something instinctual that we must have the latest things, and highest quality products?

And how does branding and marketing tap into these instincts?

(AND CHECK HOW AWSOME THESE DRAWINGS ARE!!!!!, I JUST HAD TO WHIP OUT THE OLD MARKER PENS!!!) 

Ethos: A new Voice in Design

 Is Sustainability an OXYMORON?

 Design has always seemed to improve our lives, whether it’s the way we live, or what’s within our lives to make them easier, to only find out later, that these once useful things, have cornered us into a position where using them becomes a hazard. Hazards perhaps not in short term, but in long term, such as by the way we consume, the waste it produces, and the effects poor management.

 This goes with the spread of living, the land it takes up, where supplies have to come from, the effect off transport, ease of transport, what environmental costs of the transport, etc. Such living spaces are either moving outwards into a vast spread, or condensing into more population dense areas, such as city apartments. Which is better? 

My way of thinking sometimes may be strange, but this what i got from the last lecture. Can we rely on technology to fix things – (i doubt we can) . The sustainability machine We use the Media in the wrong ways. The Media  We have disappointed our Mother. Mother Earth

As apart of Honours year design course, i am attending lectures which are presented by design academics, about design sustainability. 

It seems that due to way our society has worked other the last few decades, it has left us only to look at what we have done in terms of the damage made on the earth, and the resources that we have consumed. I remember a past lecture last year stated that something like 35% of the worlds population is consuming 60-80% of the worlds resources.

That really made me start thinking about what must be done in order to save our selves from the inevitable. Or is it that we should stop thinking about saving ourselves (being our own backsides) and start thinking globally. That’s how most of this has happened, through wealth a greed, and we still think only in terms of our selves. WHAT? we want and WHAT? we need, but this has driven us to the starvation that we are heading for.

The last lecture based its ideas around this topic of consummation and public knowledge of these issues presented by Ken Friedman from the US. From here on, you will see my visual thoughts from these lectures.