Sustainability and Design Ethics

About this book

From microcosm to macrocosm, ecodesign, green design, environmental design, and triple bottom line are quickly becoming more than just catchy phrases that describe touchy-feely trends. Increases in climate uncertainty and energy costs as well as food, water, and services insecurity, are just a few of the challenges driving the growing demand for sustainable design outcomes. Sustainability and Design Ethics provides a systematic value analysis that makes a reasoned argument the rethinking of current design methods and the values and ethics which guide them. Providing context and language, Sustainability and Design Ethics delineates the ideas and principles that lie at the foundation of a variety of codes of ethics, and then critically analyzes existing published codes and the practices that stem from them.

Sustainability and Design Ethics takes a practical approach, discussing applied ethics, and relies upon an understanding of the moral reasoning that supports the ideas and professionalism and an ethical standard of care. Drawing on the author's experience as a design professional and his study of business ethics, Sustainability and Design Ethics supplies a detailed exposition of the underlying ethical reasoning involved in the challenges confronted by contemporary design professionals. This information can then be distilled into sustainable practices and the corresponding ethics. Sustainability requires design professionals to expand the considerations of design beyond the traditional ethical points of view and to provide a balanced analysis of how a sustainable standard of care might be composed.

While other books might cover the environment and design, professional ethics are addressed as an afterthought at most, if at all. And no other book available explores sustainability from a designer's perspective. Examining present and future issues facing practitioners, Sustainability and Design Ethics provides a context for the values and ethics necessary for sustainable development design.

Contents

Why Does Prometheus Suffer?
Sustainability and Design
Why Sustainability Is Needed
Notes
Professional Ethics
What Is a Profession?
Evaluating Codes of Ethics
Sustainability and the Ethical Challenges for Designers
Endnotes
Bibliography
Is There an Ethical Obligation to Act Sustainably? Theories of Ethics
What Obligations Do We Have to Other Living Things?
Utilitarian Views of Nature
Speciesism
Who Owns the Environment?
Role of Professional Standards
Endnotes
The Design Professional and Organizations
Balancing Obligation and Opportunity
The Descent of Corporate Obligation
Justification for a Whistle-Blower
Endnotes
The Choice for Sustainability
The Design Professional as Leader
Sustainability and Obligation
Sustainability and Design Ethics
Endnotes
The Precautionary Principle and Design
Moral Underpinnings of the Precautionary Principle
Precautionary Principle and Design
What Do We Owe the Future?
Duty to Prevent Harm
Precaution and Design
Endnotes
Flourishing
What Ought We to Do?
Designer as Teacher
Design Values
Designer as Student
Endnotes

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