Sixth Annual Design Symposium Examines Sustainable Innovation
From the necessity to cut back waste within the style trade to the rising client demand for environmentally pleasant merchandise, the 2022 Pratt Design Symposium: Designing for Sustainable Innovation coated a spread of points now impacting the design trade and launched a brand new sustainability-focused packaging design scholarship at Pratt. Held on November 30 on the Asia Society in Manhattan, the annual occasion that was started in 2016 drew a vigorous crowd together with college students, school, professionals within the subject, and members of the general public focused on how design and design schooling will be reshaped to higher defend the planet.
The panel of main sustainable design specialists included Caroline Brown, managing director of Closed Loop Companions; Mitchell Gold, CEO of MGBW House; Ron Gonen, CEO of Closed Loop Companions; and Al Iannuzzi, vice chairman of sustainability at Estée Lauder Firms. They shared insights on present points and the potential for the round economic system and different rising practices to advertise a extra sustainable and moral design observe. President Frances Bronet welcomed the viewers earlier than introducing the moderator, internationally acclaimed entrepreneur and designer Marc Rosen, an alumnus who’s a Pratt Trustee Emeritus and school member within the Faculty of Design. Rosen is the creator of the Design Symposium.
“Right this moment we now have the problem of learn how to create lovely and sustainable packaging,” Rosen mentioned. “To attain this aim, we now have adopted the 5 R’s: rethink, cut back, refill, exchange, and recycle. To the credit score of suppliers and designers, this formidable problem is being met step-by-step by leveraging these ideas of motion.”
The Marc Rosen Excellence in Sustainable Packaging Scholarship is the third full-tuition Pratt scholarship to be established by the Marc Rosen Scholarship Fund for Packaging By Design which up to now has supplied near $2.5 million in scholarships and awards for over 100 Pratt college students. This new scholarship will probably be awarded each different 12 months to a Pratt graduate pupil who’s within the Packaging, Identities and Systems Design program and is focused on how design selections impression native and international assets and communities. Erik Páez Menzel, MS Packaging, Identities and Programs Design ’25, is its inaugural recipient and shared the significance of this assist on the occasion: “I at all times inform everybody how valued new concepts, innovation, and design at the moment are, particularly in a metropolis like New York. Designers are on the frontlines of adjusting not solely how we work together with merchandise and their packaging however of a cultural shift: everybody will be a part of this course of.”
In the course of the panel, Caroline Brown of Closed Loop Companions introduced on this matter within the international style trade, analyzing how every part from the emissions it produces, to the water it wastes, requires enchancment. “There may be alternative at each single a part of the worth chain,” Brown mentioned. “80 to 90 % of the end result of the tip of a product’s life relies within the headquarters of the corporate within the design room. Any of you coaching to be designers, please keep in mind that stat. The choices that you’ll make on materials use building and the way product is put collectively will predicate whether or not it is ready to be reused or whether or not it has to go to landfill on the finish of its life.”
Al Iannuzzi then mentioned how Estée Lauder Firms is making these decisions for its high-end merchandise whereas addressing the query: “How do you design a package deal that’s sustainable and nonetheless seems to be elegant?” Their efforts have included shifting some magnificence packaging from plastic to glass and being delicate to supplies which might be sourced responsibly: “We’re embedding innovation and sustainability into the way in which we convey merchandise to market.”
Ron Gonen of Closed Loop Companions took a broader view of the historical past of sustainability and the continued disconnect between the recycling trade and designers, a serious subject when success in lots of design areas emphasizes promoting an increasing number of objects. “We are able to have the aspiration to design sustainably, but when we don’t have the chance to spend time within the place the place all of that product and packaging goes to be recycled, our perception into learn how to design that product may be very restricted,” Gonen mentioned.
Mitchell Gold of MGBW House supplied a perspective from the furnishings trade and the way environmental consciousness will be on the core of a enterprise. His firm integrates “lean manufacturing” to attenuate waste and employs extra supplies in new merchandise, reminiscent of further leather-based from furnishings manufacturing used to make purses and wallets. “I would like you right now, in spite of everything that you just’ve heard, to consider this and I wish to encourage you to actually have an open thoughts about what you are able to do and what function you’ll be able to play in correcting this setting,” Gold mentioned.
The 2022 Design Symposium and the Marc Rosen Excellence in Sustainable Packaging Scholarship had been coated by WWD and Beauty Packaging. The occasion was supported by the Marc Rosen Schooling Fund and had further funding by Juliana Curran Terian, by means of the Terian Basis.
