Circle extended: Sustainable Design – but how? Tools and Methods

For a specially curated one-day symposium, the format of the Circle event series, previously established in Vienna, was expanded and reconfigured by the IDRV in cooperation with “departure - The Creative Agency of the City of Vienna”.

The sphere of influence of design is immense: a large part of the environmental impacts of products, buildings and services is determined in the design process! For many creative professionals, being able to understand and apply sustainable design as a service for a sustainable society is a necessary concern. BUT HOW? For this one-day symposium, four outstanding international tools and methods for sustainable design will be presented by their developers, tested for their applicability in workshops with small groups, and discussed.

Guests

Richard Gilbert, “The energy trumps”, London

Stella Vanassche, “OVAM SIS Toolkit + Ecolizer 2.0”, Mechelen, Belgium

Adolf Merl, “PE International”, Wien

Bernhard Dusch, “Cambridge Sustainable Design Toolkit”, Cambridge

Moderated by Harald Gründl and Ulrike Haele.

Workshops with the developers in small groups: “OVAM SIS Toolkit + Ecolizer 2.0” / “The energy trumps”

Workshops with the developers in small groups: “PE International” / “Cambridge Sustainable Design Toolkit”

Presentation of the results and discussion: Sustainable Design – but how? “Battle of the Toolkits”

The goal was to provide an overview of the methods available on the market for monitoring design processes with regard to ecological and social sustainability. The bandwidth and the application possibilities of the tools presented are vast: One important category of tools encompasses software programs and databases that allow life-cycle assessments, analyses and material reviews. In addition to these “technical” methods for determining the hard facts, there were also inspiring approaches that encourage new methods with thought-provoking and questioning techniques, from the dematerialization of design to do-it-yourself and service-design strategies.