Resurgent homecraft, design for resilience, and the everyday practices of sustainable living

Abstract

Centred on the home, this paper reports on design research serving the broad social agendas of affordable, sustainable housing and food sovereignty. Intended to inform ecological design practice, the project has revealed rich sites of values-driven craft and design as the enactment of sustainable living by householders. Practices of self-provisioning through growing, preserving, waste cycling, re-using and re-purposing feature strongly in this exploration of twelve Tasmanian households. Discernible within these settings, is a craft-design interface resonant with Christopher Frayling’s (2011) call for a renewed ‘head-heart-hand’ convergence. Distinctions between ‘professional’ and ‘artisanal’ designers and makers are blurred as multiple actors collaborate to transform default domestic space into ecological infrastructure, enabling targeted practices and ways of living. Intermeshing the interface are also flows of technology-enabled interaction. Observable in householders’ embrace of social media, is partial bridging of inter-generational ruptures and discontinuities in craft knowledge, aided by Guy Julier’s (2008) discussion of the role of design in mediating information and producing cultural activity.

The project’s backdrop is cast through an initial thematic analysis exploring dominant norms in housing and food culture. Invoked, for example, is the global flat-pack kitchen’s role in erasing culturally-nuanced food practices and their embedded crafts, along with the rise of ‘green counterpart’ consumer goods. Insights and examples from the multi-household ethnography follow, emphasising the potential for homecraft to illuminate values, experiential knowledge, skills and practices bound within deliberative sustainable living. Selected design proposals are then profiled, drawn from project participants’ own responses to generative design tasks, aimed at informing future sustainable housing design and adaptation.

Reflections upon the methodological approach are offered in conclusion, including a questioning of David Orr’s (2002) ‘design as pedagogy’ conception of ecological design which while compelling, risks privileging professional designers’ knowledge over richly instructive craft knowledge. Resilience thinking, I suggest, offers a more integrative and productive means of unifying craft and design knowledge and practice. The socio-ecological problem-solving central to design for resilience and regeneration will depend increasingly on connecting diverse domains of knowledge with social, material and post-material practices. This project has demonstrated great potential for bolstering resilience in the domestic realm. I close therefore with a call for all new and adapted housing design to make space – both conceptual and material – for resurgent homecraft, irrespective of tenure, as conditional to living more sustainably, every day.