Jonathan Chapman lecture

Today i went to a lecture by Professor Jonathan Chapman, he is the man who coined the term Emotionally Durable design 

This was one of the most interesting lectures I have been too throughout university and was really inspiring. and it was really interesting to hear somebody different talk about sustainable design and not only this but have a different view to other people.  
His theory was really interesting and its all about having something that can be stood up to time making it durable, he thinks that instead of thieving things away they should have there lives extended so they can last longer. 
Having this will help me with my essay and also give me a theory to look at for my own practice 


Because i forgot to bring my notebook to this lecture and was so interested in what he was saying i had no notes, which i struggled taking on my phone. 


But Grace kindly let me use her notes i just highlighted areas of interest 

These are Graces notes:

When we think about electronic products, we produce approximately 40 tons of waste … to produce just one ton of product. And of that one tonne of products, approximately 98% of them are thrown away within just 6 months. So if we think about that system, that process, in terms of the energy impact of that process, it’s about 1% efficient.

Our prevailing system of design and manufacture and distribution is about 99% inefficient.

A disposable battery takes a thousand times more energy to produce than you get from it.

Economically, I would argue there is no future in that, when we think about rising resource prices and also a number of customers particularly with tech products are starting to become increasingly frustrated with this fairly narrow bandwidth of user experience.

(example of iphone)

There’s more gold in a tonne of phones than there is in a tonne of rocks from a gold mine.

For this to be economically viable as a dissassemblable piece it would need to be dismantled in 8 seconds.

I think this visual rhetoric of doom and gloom, I can’t help but feel that we’ve passed that now. I also have a gut feeling that showing people these really depressing images just makes people feel a bit bad. I think that makes people less likely to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in.

Emotionally Durable Design

It’s a theory that is based on two key questions: Why do we throw things away that still work?

How can we design products that people want to keep for longer?

Within the fashion industry, there’s lots of examples of mass manufactured products that actually are based on a very different set of values and ideals than what you would assume.

Jeans, they need to become good. They start off belonging to Levi’s and after a few weeks of use they become yours.

If you buy a suit or a pair of shoes from Dunhill, the moment a hole appears or a stitch comes loose or a button pops off you send it back and there’s a system in place, and they want you to send it back, and they’ll adjust it for you, and it’s all free of charge, just part of the whole kind of character of the brand. You buy that suit, and you’re buying a place within the business. The way that that whole customer experience is described and sold to people it becomes about so much more than just the shoes. Those things are bought and they’re kept and they’re loved.

It’s funny the way some objects seem to cut through and become cherished and loved and actually part of yourself. Whereas others, they fail to do that no matter how expensive or excellent they are. One of the design challenges is how could you design things so that they do break through, even if it’s just to add six months to their life.

If you’ve got a product that lasts about two years, and you can make it last three years, then what you’ve done is you’ve brought about a 50% cut in the consumption and waste and materials and energy associated with that product. The challenge is of course, how do you make money by selling 50 % less products? And in the current prevailing understanding of how capitalism works where the volume of materials equates to economic growth and so on, it becomes very hard to imagine how an economic model like that might work. But actually, there are quite a number of alternative models which talk more about companies who are selling meaning and value and belonging. These products find a way to manifest that.

Things that get better over time

Longer lasting relationships, things that improve and things that don’t completely revolutionise our life, but somehow add richness to the encounters we have with the material world.

Should we really be boil washing, 80 degree wash full of detergents with chemicals just to maintain this really fake illusion that our life is devoid of error.

Not only are you extending the life of your goods, you’re also extending your ability to project messages to other people about just how capable you are to fix and manage this world around you.

There is no big answer. What there are are masses of answers. It will make some difference

He then eded on a quote 

'We are looking for a mass of answers, we are not looking for mass answers.'

This lecture was so interesting, some of the examples he gave were also very interesting, they were just a few and it showed that things can be done and it doesn't have to mean just slap green everywhere and stop all production of things that aren't sustainable. If we just thought smartly about how we design things or making things last longer then we would take a huge step in becoming more sustainable.