Robin & Ecological Design
By Hubert Murray
The great river of Robin’s work on ecology and the environment has many tributaries incorporating the currents of his analysis of post-Fordist production, his direct experience with worker ownership models with the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the GLC Economic Policy Group and his involvement with the founding of TWIN Trading establishing equitable trading relationships with farmers and producers in the Global South. The specifically ‘green’ bend in this river however took place in his work in Ontario that embraced the processing of waste, toxic emissions reduction and the reorganisation of energy production and consumption. This work flowed through the institutional sluice gates of the GLC and later the GLA but found full theoretical expression at the Design Council and in Robin’s teaching at Schumacher College.
What is an economist doing talking of ecological design? As an architect I come from a profession whose work is judged on the appearance and functionality of buildings, of things, of products in their finished state. It is only in recent times that the general public might take into consideration the life-cycle performance and viability of a building. What is lost to view to most onlookers however is the manufacture, assembly and coordination of component parts in the process of construction, as critical in the design as the product-in-use and, at some point in the future, of its deconstruction or disassembly. It is this interpretation of design, the design of processes and systems of production, distribution and consumption, and re-production, to which Robin, particularly in his later writings, brings his experience in labour process and the social formations around these processes, to bear.
My reading of Robin’s theoretical work and the account of his various projects sees the origin of this systems thinking in his analysis of Post-Fordism and flexible specialisation, manifested in Deming’s influence on Toyota, and Benetton’s nimble networking connections that enabled production lines to instantly respond to the fickleness of consumer taste. While the reciprocating telegraphy between consumer and producer was becoming established as the new norm in industry, TWIN Trading was transferring these principles to agricultural production in Ghana, Ecuador and elsewhere. This was not so much to have producers flexibly respond to consumers (agriculture cannot work as nimbly as a loom or dyeing vat) but to have consumers relate to producers, the link being a nurturing relationship to the land in the form of organic growing and in the ownership and possession of the land in the form of worker owned cooperatives. Central to these movements in industry and agriculture was Norbert Wiener’s notion of cybernetics, information-rich positive feedback loops forming a mutually reinforcing relationship between producers and consumers and in the case of the TWIN farmers, through a positive social and economic relationship to the means of production.
This systems design approach to flows of production, distribution and consumption found its natural medium in the processing of waste, or as we should more properly put it, the continuum of material reprocessing. Quite apart from the objective of closing down incinerators (major sources of dioxins and heavy metals) an additional advantage of materials recycling was the decentralisation, and with that, the democratisation of the process. By devolving responsibility for this stage in the life of materials – whether by composting, recycling or re-using material – into the hands of the users, and by publishing data recording reduced landfill and the quantities of materials repurposed etc. – the design of the process is an exemplar of holistic systems thinking linking users and products, producers and materials into an integrated service, a part of a larger whole. That is to say, a true systems ecology.
In his paper Design and the Political Economy of Transition, a contribution to the Transition Design Symposium held at Schumacher College in 2016, Robin presents his waste project as a case study in failure, albeit a constructive failure that exposed the power structure and vested interests blocking the innovations of the social economy. But as he also notes, while these initiatives were undertaken at the turn of the century, a mere decade later, the development of digital platforms repositions social economies in a position of greater advantage in relation to the market economy and therefore in a more potentially productive relationship with the local state infrastructure.
One direction in which I would have liked this conversation to develop is in the matter of scaling and diffusion, set up here and elsewhere as distinct and often contrary growth strategies. From my own experience in working with a large hospital system in Massachusetts, they can be productively synergistic. As with many hospital systems in the United States, consolidation has produced conglomerates of multi-institutional organisations, often with quite different management cultures. Some such as Kaiser Permanente in California have grown organically and are thus able to introduce a unified and comprehensive approach to waste and energy management, achieving economies of scale in a top-down hierarchical structure. Others such as Partners HealthCare in Boston have grown by accretion, constituent members having different purchasing and management histories and priorities. Economies of scale in that situation have often proved difficult to achieve but on the other hand the diversity of approach to waste, energy and procurement set the parent system up with the creative potential of heterogeneity as distinct from the monoculture of a fully unified system. Furthermore, these agglomerations tend to engender systems that are by their nature archipelagos of semi-autonomous republics, i.e. set up outside and sometimes in opposition to central authority. Here again, the potential of platforms for coordination and monitoring reduce both the demand and the need for industrial scale imperatives such as standardisation and uniformity while at the same time increase opportunities for creative innovation. For such platforms to be effective however there has to be some consensus – a social prerequisite – on goals to be achieved (whether it be in landfill diversions, reduction in carbon emissions, or vehicle miles travelled). This approach can be de-institutionalised and customised for introduction in the context of community and neighbourhood.
If we have clarified the meaning of ‘design’ in this thread of Robin’s work, what then of ‘ecology’? It is his focus on systems, and networks, on the cybernetic interconnectedness of production, distribution, consumption, and re-creation, and the connections between the social, the economic and the technical that constitutes his understanding of ecology. Processes are not linear and not even two- or even three-dimensional. Rather they are dynamic and multidirectional.
The RED team design of health services in Kent and Bolton are instances of this open-ended approach that focuses on well-being, a concept that goes beyond “health maintenance” (as in the US Health Maintenance Organizations) and far beyond the idea of hospitals as models of human repair workshops. The doctor (= ‘teacher’) / patient (= passive receiver and ‘one who suffers’) relationship is overturned, reversing the subject / object, giver / receiver dialectic, transforming an unequal exchange into that of shared responsibilities and ambitions in restorative health. The playing card “Agenda” for patient self-diagnosis in Bolton is a way to redistribute agency in that relationship. The “Activmobs” dog walking fitness initiatives in Maidstone not only engaged the patients, but somewhat akin to the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, the environment itself is enlisted as a partner in the pursuit of a collective goal for health and well-being.
This also calls to mind the thinking of Ken Robinson who rejects the proto-industrial model of education based on testing a quantum of known facts, a “product” in favour of an approach that nurtures goal-free, parameter-free creativity. Facts and techniques may be involved but only as stepping stones to destinations defined by those who are doing the stepping. The quality of the soil – the sustaining medium - matters as much as, or even more than, the quality of the plant – the one-off product.
Robin characterises the methodology of designers as being (refreshingly) non-linear, rooted in practice, at the nexus of concept and economic practicality, user oriented and multi-disciplinary. He derives much of this thinking from the works of John Thackera, Christopher Alexander and Victor Papanek, amongst many others. His notions of ecology are not so much rooted in the ecology of the natural world (though that is not excluded), rather in the ecology of social and economic systems and the cycles of development and transition. Strong and specific influences here are Carlota Perez, Edgar Morin and Ulrich Beck. In the case of Beck, his characterisation of the technical having assumed an increasingly political significance is an observation made well before the time of Covid-19.
This range of references reflect in some small part the scope and richness of discussion with Robin while he lived. This digital archive represents the continuance of that discussion with him which, according to his principles, will be multidimensional, omni-directional and beyond any stated end.
28 August 2020