Ehrenfeld Workshop

I am organizing a workshop with John Ehrenfeld, big man of Industrial Ecology and author of Sustainability by Design for our research program (Sustainable Living and working). His book can be seen lying on any given desk at the university and everyone is running around chanting the mantra, "having not being...having not being." He is visiting for a week from the States and will also be giving one of the top 10 lectures for our 40th Jubilee.

Since I have been doing a lot of reading on the HCI and Ubicomp community tackling sustainability for the first time, I am curious about Ehrenfeld’s views towards their propositions and research questions as well as his thoughts on the priorities of sustainability in critical design practice.

When I read Shove and Manzini or hear Chris Ryan speak, their focus is always on the systemic or sociotechnical scale of things. Yes obviously paradigm shifts have to occur on the systemic scale, but what can be the response for designers on different scales from small to big? Is the smallest scale going to be communities?