Design Associations in Global Environmental Governance On Sustainability Emerging During the 1960s and 1970s: New Reflections on the Role of Design in the International Debate

This MA thesis is aimed to stress the link between design organizations and global governance for what concerns sustainable development. By analyzing the main conferences of the past — especially the ones held by the ICSID Association — and by observing what is going on today on national and global level, this thesis will try to trace a path for the hypothetical future of design collaboration in the political field. It will consequently interrogate the following: Can design and politics communicate? How? Can design change the actual global situation for the better? Further, which are the past and present responsibilities that Design has to address to itself? The research behind this thesis paper was carried out mainly thanks to the support of the bibliographic archives present at the University of Brighton, England. The theme that will be addressed in these pages presents many facets and complexity, especially as it is a field and an area in constant evolution and change. Sustainability is a systemic issue, that is, a complex challenge that includes many facets enclosed in different fields of action. In recent decades, the concept itself of design changed multiple times, switching from a practice aimed to realize physical things to one aimed to the resolution of socio-cultural issues. Nowadays design crosses different ranges of subject fields and disciplinary borders and is manifest in all facets of contemporary life. Systemic Design is deeply linked with the concept of relationships and context and marked in history a radical paradigm shift consisting in translating the thinking focus from “objects” to the “relationships” that bring them together. This research is based on the conviction that the international collaboration between the great diplomatic realities must be valued and supported also by the contribution of bodies belonging to other spheres of competence, such as design. The active participation of design organizations in international debates could actually add value to discussions often moved by economic interests or the desire to obtain political favor by the population instead of by the real needs of the planet and citizens. In this sense, the a-political and interest-free collaboration of a designers’ team could really make a difference. It would be — in this case — a more complete dialogue, in which the role of the designers would fulfill the function of representing the interests of humanity and of our ecosystem, without interests deriving from economy or politics. It can be said that design itself today is undergoing a new phase of transformation, towards an active collaboration more aware and ethically valid than the past. The frontiers of a large part of the design sector today open up to new objectives, less focused on mass industrial production and much more on the design of entire systems of services aimed at the sustainable improvement of human living standards. The sector has become aware of the past about what could be the real potential of its work, now enriched with new values inherent in efforts for the social and the environment. Precisely for this reason, the world of today’s organizations and education are mobilized daily towards the management and organization of initiatives aimed at the dissemination of these ideals and their concrete realization. This thesis sustains that designers should actively take part in the international debate representing the real human needs in an independent position from political and commercial forces of nowadays.