Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Crade-to-cradle Design

Cradle-to-cradle was brought up to design by William McDonough and the chemist Dr. Michael Braungart in 2002. The term 'Cradle-to-cradle' is an encouragement to pause from the everyday routine and rethink about the conditions that form our designs. It is a method to minimise the environmental impact of products by employing sustainable production that will was discussed in the previous post. 



Cradle-to-cradle rejects the idea that growth is makes things worse to environmental health, after all nature growth is good. But instead, it promotes the idea that good design can support a rich human experience including fun, beauty, better inspiration and enjoyment.

The cradle-to-cradle is basically about constantly improving from being "less bad" to becoming "more good".


The image above is an example of how cradle-to-cradle applies to the material of aluminium. Firstly, the material comes from mining and produced in alumina. It is then taken to production to form the primary stage of aluminium which will lead to the semi-fabrication. From this stage, aluminium is ready to be manufactured into products and after using these products, they will be recycled and goes back to the semi-fabrication stage where other products can be manufactured.



References:

Anon. n.d. C2C Framework. [image online] Available at: http://www.mbdc.com/cradle-to-cradle/c2c-framework/ [Accessed 22nd January 2014]

Alcoa, n.d. Aluminium Cradle-to-Cradle Loop. [image online] Available at: http://www.alcoa.com/sustainability/en/info_page/products_design_lifecycle.asp [Accessed 22nd January 2014]

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