Sustainable Everyday Explorations

editor — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:16:58 +0000

What is SEE ?

editor — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:32:24 +0000

In short, SEE stands for Sustainable Everyday Explorations. Its main aim is to give visibility to new and more sustainable way of living, thereby triggering social conversation and stimulating pollination all over the world.

SEE is a joint initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP DTIE) and the Sustainable Everyday Project (SEP). It will consist in a web repository of trailer of student projects, a structured catalogue of solution, scenario building exercises and collective projections on new and more sustainable ways of living. SEP will organise the collection of promising projects trailers and the construction of scenarios with the contribution of design school professors and their students. All projects trailers will be displayed on the SEP web platform in a simple style. The portal itself will be designed browse these snapshots of a worldwide selection of promising projects and will link them to more in-depth presentations on the respective universities websites and to students’ online portfolios. A selection of the best examples will be promoted on the UNEP DTIE online Creative Gallery on Sustainable Scenarios, an online platform where people and organizations can share, view and learn about scenarios on sustainable way of living.

For more about SEE project, please take a look at the full project description…

What a sustainable way of living is?

editor — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:31:28 +0000

“sustainable ways of living stands for daily life activities where people and communities succeeds in living better reducing their ecological footprint and increasing the quality of the social fabric”.

Design schools from different places and cultures will propose projects likely to enable and promote new and more sustainable ways of living in their own contexts thus stimulate debates and new visions about them…

One of the purposes of SEE is to provide a platform to debate what sustainable way of living may be: what it means and what it corresponds with across socio-cultural differences. The definition above is proposed as a working definition and it is likely to evolve in the course of the project..

How does SEE work?

editor — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:30:25 +0000

Professors of design schools interested in taking part in SEE are invited to point out the best project they have followed in recent years on sustainable ways of living. They will receive invitations from SEE by mail which they should forward to their selected student/groups of students. The student(s) task is to post a trailer of one of their projects on the SEE website. They will have to fill in a short form and extract a selection of images from their projects supported by short captions. Their posts will be turned into a 30 second animation presenting a snapshot of the project with links to more detailed explanations of the project. The SEE website will be regularly updated with the new projects received and a selection of them will be displayed on the UNEP DTIE online Creative Gallery on Sustainable Scenarios. The final result will give visibility to the students, to their professors and the design schools. It will also provide access to a wide range of fresh and stimulating ideas towards new and more sustainable ways of living for consultation and for discussion on the web…

For more about how SEE is organised, read the full ‘rules of the game’ presented as FAQ…

Who are the promoters of SEE ?

editor — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:29:41 +0000

UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) is currently working on communication projects for the international Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles led by the Swedish government in the framework of the Marrakech Process on sustainable consumption and production. Amongst these projects, UNEP DTIE is promoting SEE and the Creative Gallery on Sustainable Scenarios.

The Sustainable Everyday Project (SEP) coordinated by Strategic Design Scenarios in Brussels, Belgium and DIS-Indaco Politecnico di Milano in Italy proposes an open web platform to stimulate social conversation on possible sustainable futures… It is organized around 3 core activities: a Scenarios laboratory where new visions of sustainable everyday life are proposed and discussed; a Catalogue of cases of social innovation showing original solutions promising in terms of sustainability and a Traveling exhibition to meet public events, confront with closed scientific communities and give visibility to new visions of sustainable daily living.

SEE is a joint initiative of UNEP DTIE and SEP. SEP will organise the collection of promising projects activating the network of design school professors that have taken part in previous SEP researches and projects. Results will be available on the SEE website and SEP will promote a cross construction of scenarios based on the analysis of this material. A selection of the best contributions to sustainable ways of living will be promoted on the UNEP DTIE online Creative Gallery on Sustainable Scenarios.

SEE pilot phase!

editor — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:28:49 +0000

The SEE project is currently launching the pilot phase. About thirty international professors and students of design schools volunteer to initiate the process and test the platform. They received the first series of 5 invitations and designate recent remarkable projects that could replace mainstream ways of living with new, more sustainable ones. These posts will create the first sample of SEE projects. They will be displayed on a world map and will be searchable according to the location of their development and their related topics. An assessment of the pilot will be done by the SEE core team in order to tune the platform with the first participants before opening it to more postings.

Next steps…

editor — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:27:27 +0000

SEE intends to be a project repository on sustainable ways of living. A database on which to build layers of design exercises and peer-to-peer discussion within the design research community and beyond… The Design Research Agenda for Sustainability – DRAS – prepared during the Changing the Change conference, held in Torino in July 2008 provides a very good framework to apply on SEE and draw new layers of elaboration of the platform: the core vision is to take the projects posted by the schools as a starting point for discussion within the design community to focus on emerging issues on sustainable lifestyles.
Find below a draft description of a possible architecture of interaction to foster this conversation among SEE participants and everyone interested in sustainable ways of living…

I would like to be involved…

editor — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:16:51 +0000

Who can be involved?
-   If you are teaching in a design school and interested in SEE,
-   If you are a design student and work on sustainable ways of living,
-   If you simply want to be kept informed about SEE’s developments,
please take one minute to fill in the form below and we will add you to the SEE mailing list.

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