Marriage of Materials

Gant (in collaboration with Chapman) co-devised the annual 100% Sustainable? feature exhibit, research gathering space, workshop and seminar event at 100% Design in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The project represents an ongoing research methodology that gathers research data and contributions from across design discourse utilising leading practioners and researchers to facilitate the sustainability debate at the heart of the design industry, enabling greater flows of information between sustainable design research and industrial design practice were it needed most. In 2006 the project generated a research gathering space as the feature exhibit at the 100% Design exhibition, London. Contributors were asked to create an image-based representation of their perception of sustainable design and to answer a questionnaire that questioned the viability of different sustainable design strategies and the degree of sustainable design application in relation to their practice. 2154 contributions were received from across the international and disciplinary design fields and formed a live evolving archive over the four days of the event. The information gathered represents a unique census of the industry and was disseminated and published via a book ‘Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories’ (Earthscan 2007) and online, and it fed the content for the following ‘masterclass’ series –‘100% Sustainable?’ 2007. Informed by the research gathered the subsequent event ‘100% Sustainable? – 2007’ consisted of 9 disciplinary specific master-class workshops tasked with forming ‘101 Approaches to Sustainable Design’; a resource of useable sustainable design strategies applicable to the range of design disciplines. These workshops were steered by 20 influential and internationally acclaimed design practioners, researchers and company representatives including Tejo Remy, Bill Dunster, Dr Kate Fletcher, Philips, ICI. The results and contributions gathered from the event provide, unique insights and practical tools and resources published for use by the design populace nurturing sustainable design progress within the design industry. In 2008 the project exhibited a 96 square meter event space and scale model environment of ‘contentious’ scenarios in which exemplar, sustainable design products were presented and broadcast around the exhibition Earls Court. Four one day seminars and workshop sessions ‘Growing, Learning, Modelling and Making’ explored different approaches to Sustainability using mixes of academic and industrial participants.