-- Professor He Renke, Department of Industrial Design, Hunan University
If designers at the end of the 19th century greeted the 20th century with a new style of art that was full of vitality and enthusiasm for the traditional style and the desire for the new century, designers at the end of the 20th century were more calm. Rational reasoning reflects the history of industrial design in a century and looks forward to the direction of development in the new century, not just the pursuit of formal innovation. In fact, after entering the 1990s, the revival of style seems to have come to an end. The post-modern world has become a thing of the past. Deconstructionism is still a high school, and industrial design needs a theoretical breakthrough. So many designers turned to explore the relationship between industrial design and sustainable human development from a deep level, trying to establish a coordinated development mechanism between human-society-environment through design activities. A major shift in the development of industrial design. The concept of green design emerged as one of the major trends in the development of industrial design today.
Green design stems from people's reflection on the environmental and ecological damage caused by modern technological culture, reflecting the return of the designer's moral and social responsibility. For a long period of time, while industrial design has created a modern lifestyle and living environment for humans, it has also accelerated the consumption of resources and energy and has caused tremendous damage to the ecological balance of the earth. In particular, the over commercialization of industrial design has made design an important medium that encourages uncontrolled consumption. The “planned abolition of merchandise†is an extreme manifestation of this phenomenon, which has led to many criticisms and censures. Have to rethink the role and role of industrial design.
Green design focuses on the ecological balance between man and nature. In every decision-making process, the environmental benefits are fully taken into consideration and the damage to the environment is minimized. For industrial design, the core of green design is "3R", namely, Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse. It is necessary not only to minimize the consumption of substances and energy, to reduce the emission of harmful substances, but also to make it easy to classify and recover products and components. And recycle or recycle. Green design is not only a technical consideration but, more importantly, an ideological change. It requires designers to abandon the practice of overemphasizing the appearance of products, while focusing on innovation in the true sense. In a more responsible way to create the shape of the product, with a more simple, long-lasting shape to make the product extend its life as much as possible.
The direct influence of green design is the American design theorist Victor Papanek. Back in the late 1960s, he published a highly controversial book, Design for the real world. The book focuses on the most pressing issues facing the designer's human needs, emphasizing the social and ethical values ​​of the designer. Babanac believes that the greatest role of design is not to create commercial value, nor is it a competition in packaging and style, but an element of an appropriate process of social change. He emphasized that design should seriously consider the limited use of Earth resources and serve the protection of the Earth's environment. For his point of view, there were not many people at the time. However, since the "energy crisis" erupted in the 1970s, his "limited resources theory" has been widely recognized.
Just as the utopian social ideal pursued by modernism is difficult to coordinate with the economic reality of capitalist society, green design also has an idealistic color to a certain extent. It is necessary to achieve a balance between comfortable life and resource consumption and short-term economic benefits. The balance of long-term environmental goals is not easy. This not only requires consumers to have a conscious awareness of environmental protection, but also requires the government to advance its laws and regulations. Of course, designer efforts are also essential.
Although green design does not focus on aesthetic performance or a narrow design language, green design emphasizes minimizing unnecessary material consumption. The principle of paying attention to the use of recycled materials also reflects the appearance of the product. In the green design, "small is beautiful" and "less is more" have new meanings. Since the 1980s, an extremely simple design school has emerged, which has reduced the shape of its products to the extreme. This is the so-called "minimizationism". The famous French designer Philip Starck (1949-) is a representative of contractionism. Philip is an all-rounder. The design field involves architectural design, interior design, electrical product design, furniture design and so on. His furniture design is very simple, basically reducing the shape to the most simple but very elegant form, from the visual and material use are reflected in the "less is more" principle. Stark designed Louis 20 chairs and round tables. The front legs, seats and backrests of the chair are integrally molded from plastic, just like the human body on the back legs of the cast aluminum, which is simple and humorous.
In 1994, Stark designed a TV set for Sabah’s French company to use a recyclable material – a high-density fiber molded case, but also created a “green†for household appliances. New vision.
In many countries and regions, transport is not only the main source of air and noise pollution, but also consumes a lot of valuable energy and resources. As a result, the green design of vehicles, especially cars, has attracted the attention of designers. The constant emergence of new technologies, new energy sources and new processes has opened up new prospects for designing environmentally friendly car industry. Many industrial designers have made active explorations in this regard. While striving to solve environmental problems, they have also created new and unique product images. Green design not only became a public relations strategy for enterprises to create a perfect corporate image, but also catered to consumers' growing environmental awareness.
Reducing pollution emissions is the most important issue for automotive green design. In terms of technology, there are two main ways to reduce tail gas pollution. One is to increase efficiency so as to reduce the amount of pollutants discharged, and the other is to use new clean energy. In addition, it is also necessary to enhance the integrity of the appearance and reduce the wind resistance. The EV1 of American General Motors is the earliest electric car, and it is also the best energy-saving car in the world. It adopts all-aluminum structure and streamline modeling, and it can travel 112-114km on one charge. Entering the 21st century, the sustainable development of human society will be an extremely urgent issue, and green design will inevitably play a key role in the reconstruction of human benign ecological homes.