EcoDesign Resource
The Faculty of Design is pleased to be working with the Victorian Environmental Protection Authority to showcase the work of our students in our Eco-design studios. The Faculty is increasingly building capacity with in this exciting area. We currently run studios within the Industrial Design and Product Design Engineering departments and from 2007 will offer Eco-design studios to Interior Design undergraduates. Communications students currently engage in environmental design issues for the Southern Cross packaging Awards. Next time we update this resource we will showcase examples of student work from all these departments.
We believe this area will be hugely important to the future of design practice and research and the skills our students are learning valuable to industry practice. We hope this web resource will be an informative teaching and learning tool for design students in Australia and world wide and look forward to establishing links with other teaching and research facilities to promote a network of environmental design resources.
Professor Lyndon Anderson
Environmental Protection Authority
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EPA Victoria is proud to partner with Swinburne University to support this important showcase of innovation and environmental stewardship. EPA Victoria believe that resource efficiency is the new productivity, and is integral to ensuring that Victoria continues to lead the way towards being a sustainable state. We must look at the ëwhole life cycleí of a product or service to really begin to understand what is necessary to be sustainable. The projects highlighted on this website are tangible and cost effective examples of how businesses can reduce the environmental impact of their products and services to improve the long term sustainability of their business. Mick Bourke, |
Briefs
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Students research the environmental impacts of various industries such as Automotive, Electronics, Furniture, Fashion, Aviation etc, to identify potential areas for Eco-efficiency. They conceptualise product solutions using Life Cycle Thinking and Eco-Design checklists to design products which will reduce environmental impacts. |
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Students research the environmental impacts of the consumer electronics industry. They look not only at new technologies and industry best practice but the social, cultural and economic factors which will affect the future of products within this industry. Using Life Cycle Thinking and Eco-Design checklists they design products which will reduce environmental impacts. |
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To promote the social and environmental benefits of waste minimisation, furniture design students have utilised readily available industrial waste materials to create furniture pieces capable of small volume production runs. The furniture had to be easily folded, stacked or disassembled to suit the spatial requirements of one of the following environments; inner-city laneway cafÈ, child-care centre or student accommodation. |
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Melbourne 2030 looks at the Victorian Governments vision for living in Melbourne in the year 2030. It focuses on areas such as public transport and housing. Ecosense studios, run in conjunction with Dr Chris Ryan at Lab 3000 focused on the impacts of tourism, utilising digital technology to provide solutions. More projects can be found on the Lab 3000 website at http://lab.3000.com.au/research/research/index.jsp in the Digital Ecosense on line publication by Lab 3000 and Dr Chris Ryan. |
Links
If your university has an environmental design resource showcasing student work or academic research please contact Judith Glover at jglover@swin.edu.au to be added to our list of links.
EPA Victoria - Environmental Protection Authority, Melbourne
http://www.epa.vic.gov.au
Centre for Design at RMIT, Melbourne - Environmental Design Research Facility
http://www.cfd.rmit.edu.au
National Centre for Sustainability, Swinburne University, Melbourne
http://www.swin.edu.au/ncs
Sustainability Victoria
http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au
Eco-recycle Victoria
http://www.ecorecycle.sustainability.vic.gov.au
Lab 3000- Digital Innovation - EcoSense Publication
http://lab.3000.com.au/research/research/index.jsp?page=article&id=44da11f7-0013-4ede-b446-9c3b5f487ba4
Product Stewardship Australia - Electronics take-back scheme
http://www.productstewardship.asn.au
Design by Nature - Graphic Design resource
http://www.designbynature.org
UTS (University of Technology Sydney) Sustainability research
http://www.sustainability.uts.edu.au/research/about/index.html
University of New South Wales - Environment and Sustainability Research Group
http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/research/esrg
University of South Australia - Institute for Sustainable Systems and Technology
http://www.unisa.edu.au/isst/whoweare/default.asp
The Centre for Sustainable Design - Surrey, United Kingdom
http://www.cfsd.org.uk
Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Design for Sustainability
http://www.io.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=916ae417-a27c-4141-bb3d-317fd763eaf3&lang=en