How circular design can benefit both people and nature

by Maia Puyat of CNN

In circular design, all aspects work together to achieve stability — whether that’s business, technology, nature, or humans. Photo courtesy of AND A HALF

Homeostasis is a tendency to seek out balance. It combines two Greek words that mean “similar” and “standing still,” and describes how living things actively pursue stability when faced with external changes.

As I grew older, I started to see a similar tendency in things outside my cells and tissues. Days where the heat scorched and bit were followed by rains that fell in blocks. A series of bad days were abated by a happier one. For every loss, I gained, and that cycle repeated itself until everything felt balanced.

Listening to the lectures of this year’s Social Problems Are Design Problems organized by the design studio And A Half, the theme of regeneration felt similar to homeostasis. In circular design, all aspects work together to achieve stability — whether that’s business, technology, nature, or humans. Designs geared toward filling the holes the pandemic and climate change have left us, of solving problems with long-term solutions, are designs that pursue homeostasis.

Circular design cannot be accomplished alone

The same way the different components of our body work together to maintain balance, creating designs that are regenerative and sustainable involves several elements.

“We can generate ecosystems based on abundance for all, and we need to do it together, because we can’t do it alone,” explained product developer and industrial designer Bert Peeters.

Peeters is the founder of the Philippines Permaculture Association and permaculture development site, Cabiokid. “The permaculture habitat has multiple links. It’s not a linear process. It’s systems thinking. It’s thinking like nature,” he said.

With permaculture designing, the goal is to be sustainable at every step of the process in order to preserve the natural ecosystems. Photo courtesy of AND A HALF

With permaculture designing, the goal is to be sustainable at every step of the process in order to preserve the natural ecosystems, which Peeters refers to as a natural library where we learn and gather information for. “You are going to create more energy over time than you’ll need to sustain yourself, and that surplus energy is being reinvested in the system. That’s the reason why, by applying the systems and understanding permaculture, we can design so much more and so much better in a very short time,” he explained.

Similarly, when designing for business, sustainability should start with the resources.

“It’s important to understand that, when we talk about circular design today, it’s about understanding the journey but also understanding the principles that come with it, said Carlo Delantar of Altum, a circular design and strategy studio that is strives toward a “circular economy,” a model of production and consumption that minimizes waste. “The emphasis is really on the economy — we need to work together,” Delantar emphasized.

For Carlo Delantar of circular design and strategy studio Altum, sustainability starts by looking at resources and minimizing waste. Photo courtesy of AND A HALF

Christopher De Venecia, representative of Pangasinan’s fourth district, shared similar sentiments. “The fourth district of Pangasinan serves as an incubator for the creative economy,” he said. “To create an environment for local taste enterprises that will enable and encourage them to use creativity toward sustainable growth — that’s really our vision.”

In order to create designs that minimize waste, maximize longevity, and benefit all parties, it is important for everybody in the community to find a balance within the cycle of creation. As Delantar said, “The intricate design and compatibility of materials to our life really is astronomical in how it affects and impacts our lives every single day.”

Sustainable design is empowerment

Design in a way that accounts for sustainability can also rebalance circumstances for communities — to help them regain lost stability.

Keiji Ashizawa founded Ishinomaki Laboratory, a DIY public workshop to help the communities affected by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. “At the time, many of [of the] skilled workers were busy because [the] disaster areas were huge, so they had to rebuild the roads, the government spaces, so they [didn't] have time to cater to the individual houses and restaurants,” explained Ashizawa.

Keiji Ashizawa founded Ishinomaki Laboratory, a DIY public workshop to help the communities affected by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Photo courtesy of AND A HALF

Because the space was not owned by a government or private company, many people were able to use it. “Our main purpose is not to make the furniture by ourselves, not to give the furniture — more like teaching how to make something,” he said. By teaching the community how to create for themselves, they were given a sense of empowerment. High school students had the opportunity to build their own benches for an outdoor cinema, and residents could retake the control the tsunami had taken by rebuilding their own homes. “They have to stay in their temporary houses [for] a long time, so they need to have such skills,” he said.

Along the same vein, Slow Food Sari-sari, who describes themselves as “a coalition of small farmers, urban growers, community organizers, activists and advocates for food justice and the urban poor, and young volunteers working together for solidarity and change” strives to make urban gardens as common as sari-sari stores. To them, creating a healthy and balanced ecosystem can also empower a marginalized sector.

“We latched onto the idea of sari-sari stores because of their ubiquity. They are economic sites, but also sites of forging [a] community,” said Mabi David of the Slow Food Sari-sari team.

They evolved from a food relief operation that sourced fresh produce, channeling them into urban poor communities. Now, rather than donations, they want the urban poor communities they work with to take their power back and grow their own food.

“Essentially, we want to be able to help urban poor communities achieve food security first through the creation of agrobiodiversity food gardens,” explained David. Uplifting a portion of the community promotes sustainable design because it puts those who were previously disadvantaged on more equal footing. “We’re animated by this concept of mutual aid. It takes the view that everyone is valuable and has something to offer,” she said.

As we continue to reshape our lives amid the pandemic, and to do what we can to minimize the damage of global warming, I’ve learned that circular design is a legitimate way to approach this. It is a system that is mutually beneficial to people and nature, since it takes what is used to create, the creator, those created for, and where everything is created into consideration equally. If more people were to adopt this way of thinking, then it is definitely possible for us, too, to achieve homeostasis.