Authenticity, Greenwashing, and the Wicked Problem of Sustainable Design Equitable, Sustainable Practices or Greenwashing?

Brooke L. Hammond

doi:10.7273/000008033

"Space and design affects day-to-day living through the impact of emotion, thought, and the environment. Creating an intentional sense of place is what designers are hired to do. When developing the built environment to span beyond current standards, it is important to keep the world moving forward in the right direction. Design theory is a framework of ideas and guides that can help explain why intentional design works. It helps give educated solutions to problems that may not have one outcome. Sometimes, the easiest way to solve a design problem is not how you define the solution, but rather the original issue. Theory is simply finding how to approach a conceptual issue. It can be personal, logical, illogical, and overall, just how a person or client wants things to be in a certain way. Theory acts as a guideline to understanding why there can be unwritten design rules and design “norms” to life that have not been thoroughly researched yet. Buchanan theorized design has turned from a “trade activity to a segmented profession to a field for technical research and to what now should be recognized as a new liberal art of technological culture,” (Buchanan, 1992). Theory connects the craft to the art and the concept to a result. Design connects to many other aspects of the world, one issue being wicked problems. Wicked problems are ill-defined, complex issues that impact society. These problems are defined by having distinct characteristics. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution. (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 166). How these wicked problems are defined or solved is not one simple answer; instead, these problems allow systems and institutions to think intuitively, and usually these issues are solved iteratively"

Authenticity, Greenwashing, and the Wicked Problem of Sustainable Design Equitable, Sustainable Practices or Greenwashing?

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