A Greenhouse Research Talk by Carl Zimring
This work-in-progress focuses on the history of sustainable design strategies within the Scandinavian furniture industry since the publication of Our Common Future. This history includes a series of voluntary corporate sustainability efforts such as the development of ecolabels and industry certification of materials, but it is also shaped by regulatory requirements within the European Economic Area and within individual countries. I will discuss how the changing regulatory environment has shaped design strategies within the framework of sustainable development, and also mull how sustainable these strategies are for improving relations with the natural world.
Carl A. Zimring (he/him) is a professor of sustainability studies and director of the Center for Critical Discard Research at Pratt Institute. His books include Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America (Rutgers University Press, 2005), Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States (NYU Press, 2016), Aluminum Upcycled: Sustainable Design in Historical Perspective (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), (with Sara B. Pritchard) Technology and the Environment in History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), and (with Steven H. Corey) the edited volume Coastal Metropolis: Environmental Histories of Modern New York City (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). This talk is based on research in progress with the Material Ecologies of Design project at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.