This repository contains information on the MIT independent activies period (IAP) course Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Design. This is a 3 credit course open to MIT graduate and undergraduate students.
This class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1pm to 5pm in E15-359.
If you're interested in taking this course, please fill out this form.
More information can be found on the syllabus.
Is oat milk more environmentally friendly than almond milk? How many times do I need to reuse a grocery bag to offset its production energy? How long does a solar panel have to last to justify its production? These questions don’t have simple answers, and the background and skill set of those investigating them can lead to very different conclusions. However, through their rigorous analysis, these questions can lead us to new insights into the nature of the climate crisis and how we might mitigate its impact.
The climate crisis represents an existential threat to humanity, and therefore is a key consideration across many fields of study. While the benefits of this widespread focus include an accelerated pace of discovery and innovation, it can also lead to challenges with different disciplines and communities approaching issues of environmental sustainability with goals that do not align. Understanding these varied perspectives on what environmental sustainability means and how we can work to achieve it is key to unifying our efforts in mitigating the impacts of climate change.
In this course, students will learn to analyze claims of sustainability in existing products and systems and judge whether these designs truly mitigate environmental harm. The first half of the course will focus on the analysis of existing designs, while in the second half students will iterate and refine their own proposals for sustainably designed products and systems. Examining the environmental, political, and social implications of their proposals, they will justify their approaches with current data and methods and demonstrate how their design ultimately benefits the world.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Summarize current research and academic consensus on the nature of environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
- Critically evaluate current approaches to the assessment of system sustainability such as LEED, LCA, or Emergy evaluation.
- Propose appropriate justifications and metrics for assessing the sustainability of a given system.
- Analyze and illustrate the system-level interactions that designs have with the non-human environment.
- Quantify the environmental impacts of a design in terms of metrics that relate to environmental sustainability.
- Examine arguments for and against the implementation of sustainable designs and practices, weighing the evidence that supports each side.
- Evaluate whether a given design (product, system, or technology) can be considered sustainable.
- Propose their own sustainable designs for products, systems, or technologies and justify how they benefit the environment.