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Stuffitis, Affluenza and the Circular Economy

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Lecture to design students at Central Saint Martin’s, University of the Arts, London, November 2015. The session was aimed at questioning the contemporary Green zeitgeist, which completely dominates the design scene, both in higher education and in practice.

James starts by tackling the notion, captured by no fewer than three books titled Affluenza, that people have too much stuff – so much, indeed, that it is making them unhappy or ill. Challenging the notion that the Earth is running out of resources, he runs through how yields in agriculture have risen, how new wellsprings of oil and gas are being found every day, and why rare earths are not really so rare.

Briefly noting how enthusiasts for a circular economy prefer efficiency in the use of resources to the saving of labour, James goes on to look at some of the possibilities, for designers, that now exist with both inorganic and organic materials. He concedes that the successful application of 3D printing to housing could lead to shortages of steel, aluminium and concrete, but ends with a plea for designers to orientate more to science, and to be aware of the opportunities available from… the sea.

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