Design for Health, Wellbeing, and Happiness
Designs with benefits: hearth fire nights and bittersweet chores
Stella Boess, Anna Pohlmeyer
TU Delft (2)
S.U.Boess@tudelft.nl
Keywords: design for sustainability; design for wellbeing; case study; crossover
Abstract
This paper presents 'designs with benefits' by capitalising on the joint benefits of sustainability and wellbeing. Designs with benefits are proposed through four ‘in-between’ themes for design goals as a new direction in supporting sustainability through design. We conducted post-hoc case study research on student projects from two studios: a studio working on sustainability, and a studio working on wellbeing. We searched for aspects in the sustainable studio's work that would promote wellbeing, and, conversely, for aspects in the wellbeing studio's work that would promote sustainability. Looking at three student projects we selected from each studio resulted in four themes we propose as in-betweens to open the door towards crossover approaches. They are: open reflection, pathway activities, resource and material preservation as side effect, and broader insights. Examples of design work illustrating the themes are given and implications for sustainable design discussed.
This paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
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Cite this paper: Boess, S., Pohlmeyer, A. (2016). Designs with benefits: hearth fire nights and bittersweet chores. Proceedings of DRS 2016, Design Research Society 50th Anniversary Conference. Brighton, UK, 27–30 June 2016.
This paper will be presented at DRS2016, find it in the conference programme