When it comes to environmental sustainablility, the architecture and design community likes to think of itself as leading the way. Many companies, such as carpet tile giant Interface, whose founder Ray Anderson had been long-term champion of sustainability before he died last year, are widely acknowledged as leading the world in sustainable business practices. Yet the message from environmental organisations is that we need to do more – much more.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, which has been working with businesses that include ergonomic chair company Humanscale to help protect the environments of endangered animals and reduce carbon emissions, if everyone in the world consumed natural resources and generated carbon dioxide at the UK rate we’d need three planets to support us. And the situation in the USA and China is even more grave, it says.
A few years ago there was a feeling that this message was beginning to hit home. But now, with the global financial crisis showing no signs of abating, there’s a real danger that the need to protect the environment for future generations will slip off the agenda.
‘If you look at the curve that traces our level of consumption since the 1970s you’ll see that it dips for the first time around 2007-2008,’ says Anthony Bennett, WWF’s director of development, ‘but then it starts to climb again due to the credit crunch.’ Humanscale’s founder and CEO Robert King has served on WWF’s National Council since 1999, and for a decade has been championing WWF’s causes through Faces in the Wild, an annual event that asks architects, designers and artists to produce wildlife-inspired artwork to be auctioned at a cocktail evening attended by the great and the good of the design industry. King then matches the amount of money raised pound for pound and donates the proceeds to WWF.
Last year the event took place in November at Humanscale’s London HQ, and despite a still-gloomy outlook for the world economy, people seemed happy to put their hands in their pockets for this good cause.
Some 200 people attended the auction, biding for original work by artists and designers that included Tom Dixon, Todd Bracher, Caroline Gibello and Marcel Wanders. Every item was sold, and the event raised £26,230 for WWF. The work included a silk-screen print of endangered animals by interior and textile designer Sue Timney, which fetched £1,100 after a fierce bidding war, a blue and white ceramic cow by designer Marcel Wanders that went for £600, and a photographic print by Caroline Gibello of a lioness stalking through long grass brought in £800.
If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of Faces in the Wild before, it’s probably because the event has kept rather a low profile in previous years, despite raising a total of £250,000 since the inaugural event in 2000.
‘People could be quite cynical about our relationship with WWF,’ says Tim Hutchings, president of Humanscale International, ‘but we’ve been doing the Faces in the Wild event for 10 years and we haven’t really spoken about it publicly before.
So why now? ‘As the threat to our environment becomes more and more serious, the need for organisations like the WWF to raise money is greater,’ he says. ‘So we thought it was time we talked about it.’
A photographic giclée print by South African fine art photographer Caroline Gibello of a lioness in long grass, above, raised £800 in the November Faces in the Wild art auction for the World Wildlife Fund, held at the Humanscale London HQ. Above right, a blue and blue ceramic cow, created by designer Marcel Wanders, added £600 to the fund There’s no doubt that events such as this generate good publicity for companies like Humanscale, but Hutchings urges us to put any cynicism aside. ‘This affects all of us, our generation and the ones that will follow us,’ he says. ‘It’s centric to the environment that we live in. It’s such a shame if any of the species or their habitats are lost – and they are being lost. But if all manufacturers get behind this cause they can really make a difference.’
Many companies donate money to good causes, but Hutchings thinks that more events like Faces in the Wild are needed to raise awareness of the threat to our environment and the species – including our own – that inhabit it. ‘I think it would be wonderful if our industry could do more of these events, because the changes are tangible,’ he says.
Unsurprisingly, WWF has to be careful about which companies it chooses to work with, but Bennett explains there’s a direct link between the operations of a company like Humanscale and the mission to protect endangered species: ‘If you want to conserve and protect animals then you have look at the habitats they live in – the forests and sustainable ecosystems – and that effectively brings you into resource anagement,’ he says. ‘That’s why Humanscale, which has a great record in terms of the way it manages resources, has been a very apt partner for us. We’re very careful when it comes to assessing due diligence, but Humanscale was already taking its commitment to the environment very seriously.’
Humanscale has also helped WWF establish the GTFN, an initiative aimed at promoting the use of more sustainable timber to curb deforestation. And the company says it has made sustainability central to ‘every facet of a product’s development’.
‘There’s no doubt that sustainability has become a buzzword,’ says Hutchings, ‘but if you drill deeper I think you’d find that some companies aren’t taking it as seriously as they seem to. When you raise the subject of environmental sustainability, a lot talk about how a product can be recycled. But even if products are 100 per cent recyclable, there’s no guarantee that they will in fact be recycled.
‘At Humanscale we aim to use significantly fewer parts in our chairs, and that means we can get more into a shipping container and that we’ll use less cardboard in transporting the product. Our distribution model also different from many of our competitors’ models in that we put assembly plants near to the markets where we sell our products,’ he says.
Humanscale has also worked with WWF on a project in the Mondulkiri Protected Forest – a 2,350 sq miles site in eastern Cambodia – which aims at protecting the area from poaching and illegal logging that is threatening indigenous wildlife. The company helped fund patrols in the Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary and in the corridor that links the sanctuary to the adjacent Mondulkiri Protected Forest – a contiguous area of 2,300 sq miles – to protect tigers, leopards, Asian elephants, Wild Water Buffalo and other indigenous creatures.
Sustainability may have become a buzzword in recent years, but that isn’t to say that companies in the A&D community aren’t taking it seriously. Design companies such s HOK, Morgan Lovell, Jestico + Whiles and Interface – to name but a few – have consistently earned praise for their green credentials. According to architect, environmentalist and founder of The Green Register Lucy Pedlar, architects are taking the lead in sustainable business practices. ‘I
think that architects, out of all the construction professionals, are the most up-to-speed with environmental issues,’ she says. The RIBA also works closely with environmental organisations including WWF.
But Pedlar, whose organization provides training on sustainable practices for construction professionals, agrees that there is a lot more to do. ‘There’s an awful lot more that architects need to know,’ she says, ‘and it’s a steep learning curve, but attitudes to sustainability have changed hugely since we started 11 years ago.’
Humanscale’s involvement with WWF is just one of many inspiring stories of companies in the design industry working to protect the environment, but it’s one that needs to be told now more than ever. Recent figures from the United Nations reveal that greenhouse gasses reached record levels in 2010 and with the governments of the world’s richest countries failing to agree a new treaty on climate change last year (it is now expected that there will be no agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases until 2020), we may be still be on course for an environmental catastrophe.
Hamilton says: ‘We’re using up the world’s resources at an unbelievable rate; the WWF’s job is becoming harder and time is running out. As soon as these habitats are gone and these animals are gone, they’re gone forever. You can’t bring them back.’
