Design and the Environment

To me design and environment are like glove and hand, when they fit well, together they serve their owners masterfully while glove protecting the hand as well as the hand looking elegant in the glove. On the other hand, when they don’t fit well, the glove makes the hand clumsy, fails to ease its work, doesn’t look good and also may cause discomfort/harm to the hand. What I learnt in class so far tells me that a successful design should serve its purpose of use, while being sustainable, beautiful, elegant, and at the same time, neither causing any harm to the environment, nor being an eyesore in it. A truly beautiful design can inspire people, enhance their quality of life, and add beauty to the environment around it. A bad design causes more harm than benefit, doesn’t add the quality of life of the intended users and doesn’t fit well with the environment around it. Then there are some designs which at the superficial level may look beautiful, but when all its impacts are considered, it is found to be unsustainable, and causes harm to the environment around it.

Among the design and environment pages:

Proper interior design in hospitals help heal patients. This is a very powerful video showing how the deep connection between human mind and body is pushing for a 'wholistic' approach to treatment of patient, where hospital design, considering various things like access to nature, indoor air quality, noise control, and lighting.

Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE: Introduces the concept of passive sustainability as contrasted with active sustainability, and how it can dramatically improve our energy efficiency, and reduce our carbon footprint, while costing much less than the latter approach. It is kind of getting energy for free. A massive amount of energy in urban environments in desert climates is air conditioning.  By intelligent planning and design, Masdar city achieves a 36 F⁰ lower temperature compared to Abu Dhabi city, thereby reducing energy needs to artificially cool the environment.

Wales city design/planning document: Wales, UK has taken a great step in rethinking its public space design for improvement of the quality of the cities there. This detailed report talks about organization, and many examples of faults of current designs and how they are being improved to add beauty, cost effective maintainance, and sustainability.

Wales UK urban planning document 

Dubai Islands have high environmental cost 
Impact of artificial Palm Islands, Dubai:  The ambitious developers of the city state Dubai, United Arab Amirates have developed real estate by creating artificial islands off the coast of the city in the Persian Gulf. The environmental awareness website Mongabay.com discusses the negative environmental impact of this lavish project catered towards the ultra-rich by destroying marine habitat of an extremely bio-diverse seascape, and changing the sea current which may eventually destroy the Dubai beaches.

Palm Island Dubai, UAE (photo taken from the International Space Station)

Aero-dynamic design of cars making them more fuel efficient: This is a wonderful video from the car manufacturer Audi AG (Germany) that highlights how the force of air dictates the designs and shapes of vehicles like planes and cars, and proper design can make them more fuel efficient. Fuel efficient vehicles are extremely important for our environment and sustainability.