Good design as design for good: exploring how design can be ethically and environmentally sustainable by co-designing an eco-hostel within a Mayan community

Abstract

Designers acknowledge that their skills can assist the visualization and materialization of a desirable future and have gone as far as proposing that design can achieve societal change. Designing for a better world is associated with decreasing environmental depletion impacts while making good for both people and the environment, if possible. Evidently, this is a space where design deals with ethical matters, defining what is good or questioning if good has a universal meaning. This paper discusses the case of Aalto LAB Mexico's (ALM) Eco-hostel project, a practical and ethical design exploration. It shares the impressions of the design team when co-designing with(in) the Mayan community of ‘20 de Noviembre’ (20 Nov), located in Calakmul, Campeche, México. The Eco-hostel project was proposed as an element which can play a central role in achieving betterment of several aspects of the community's daily life. Several of those aspects were communicated by the inhabitants of 20 Nov, and some others were identified by ALM's experts. Whereas some universal principles were applicable to the construction, the context-centred approach of ALM generated a unique proposal, conceptualized to achieve harmony with the local environmental and cultural conditions.

Keywords:

• design ethics
• designing with(in) communities
• design pedagogy
• intercultural collaboration
• environmentally and socially responsible design

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the students, facilitators, experts and documenters of ALM. Very special thanks to the people of 20 de Noviembre without whom nothing would have happened. To Ossi Naukkarinen and Alastair Fuad-Luke, I am most thankful for their comments and advice while writing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACyT) [grant number 211115]. Aalto LAB Mexico has been funded by Aalto University, Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Ciudad de México, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The Eco-hostel was crowd-funded through transformadora ciel^®.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2015.1012685

Notes on contributor

Claudia Garduño García joined Aalto University in 2008; in 2010 she obtained the degree of Master's of Arts in Applied Art and Design and in 2011 she began doctoral studies in design. Her work focuses on socially responsible design and design pedagogy, which she explores through the Aalto LAB Mexico (ALM) project, which she initiated in 2012 and still coordinates. It is expected that her doctoral dissertation Design as Freedom, which is mainly based on the work done in ALM from 2012 to 2014, will be defended in 2015.

Notes

1. In Human Dignity and Human Rights: Thoughts on the Principles of Human-Centered Design, Richard Buchanan (2001), tells the story of his trip to South Africa for a design conference. He was amazed by the manner in which the Minister of Education, Dr Kadir Asmal (a public server, not a designer), had ‘quickly and accurately … captured the core of our discipline and turned it back to us for action’. Buchanan reflects on Human Centered Design that switches focus, from the ‘form and function to form and content’. Dr Kadir Asmal's speech dedicated to the design of the South African Constitution, encouraged Buchanan to revise the historical evolution of human rights. It is in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that he finds a precious motto for humanity extendible to the practice of design: ‘recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’.

2. The second project is a water system that aims to understand all the challenges related to water collection, storage and consumption with the ultimate goal to secure the availability of sufficient fresh water. The third project tackles the challenge of gaining adequate access to healthcare systems by making use of their current craft production. The Eco-hostel was the most tangible proposal that could be concretized within a shorter time frame; the team was encouraged to participate in the crowdfunding platform transformadora ciel^® before the end of 2013, hence, it was decided to promote the Eco-hostel project.

3. Not to mention that Alvarado evaluated their installations as highly unsafe; the cables that are set directly on the wooden poles are a clear risk of fire.

4. Which is particularly relevant because ‘when design is inappropriate for some group of people, we may sometimes be looking at injustice’ (Oosterlaken 2013, 114).