Entering The Ecological Age

I just got home from KEA Business Forum, an afternoon conference which is held every half year in Copenhagen. This time the theme was sustainable design. Since this is such an important issue to me, of course I needed to go. Networking and learning with free cake and coffee in the break just makes for a great afternoon. 

Five speakers with different approaches and different backgrounds were presenting to us their knowledge on the subject, hoping to inspire and make an army of contributors to a better world. 

As Nille Juul-Sørensen, CEO of Danish Design Center was saying, we are entering a new age: The Ecological Age. Humans are consuming three planets' worth of resources, so we obviously need to change the way we make and use things. Sustainability isn't  and must not be a trend. It marks a change in the culture of the world today; a change in the way we percieve our existence in the world. As Daniel Quinn writes in Story of B:

"If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs 

but with new minds with no programs at all." 

Nille Juul-Sørensen talks about how we design and develop by looking in the back mirror. Instead we need to look forward to be able to move in the right direction. It is also essential that scienctist and researchers, the industries and designers collaborate in order to find the solutions needed to make a sustainable world. 

One of the more fashion specific talks were from a KEA student, Maja Stabel, who studies sustainable fashion. She presented her Zero-Waste project and collection that she made for David Andersen Copenhagen. I realized that I had seen Maja's project when it was exhibited at Design Museum Denmark during the Copenhagen Fashion Week this August. As mentioned, she worked on Zero-Waste which is a technique where no fabric is wasted. It is quite a complex method where you make clothing like a puzzle with pieces cut from the fabric. As she describes it it's a spontaneous method where risk taking is essential. 

All the presentations were really great and gave food for thought and a lot of inspiration and hope. I feel hope is the most important since we have to believe that we can make a change.

Below are some pictures from the exhibit in Design Museum Denmark taken with my phone since I came there unprepared. A post about the other designers showing their sustainable proposals at this exhibit will follow soon.