IntroductionSustainable design is maturing. In The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability, Ann Thorpe refers to this coming of age as the second stage in a debate 1 in which the role of design in economic and social aspects of sustainability is more fully explored, in addition to the already established focus on energy and materials. The sustainability crisis is a behavioral issue, and not one simply of technology, production, and volume. The behavioral conditions that both drive and influence patterns of material consumption are complex, yet fundamental to effective engagement with a contemporary sustainable design agenda. Indeed, until recently, sustainable design methodologies seldom engaged with the more fundamental questions such as the meaning and place of products in our lives, and the contribution of material goods to what might be broadly termed the human endeavor. New, sustainable products must look to instill new meaning and value in a critical area of human endeavor that, in so many ways, has become directionless and superficial.2 As Fletcher argues in Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays, we are not looking for mass answers, but instead, a mass of answers 3 . This pluralistic approach leads us toward a more nuanced sustainable design culture, in which essential debate begins to unpack, question, and explore new ways of working with issues of sustainability through design. In this polemical context, design is reinvigorated with a rich culture of critique that directly reinstates it as the central pioneer of positive social, economic, and environmental change, instead of a subservient, end-of-pipe problem-solving agency, as has recently become the custom.
