Sustainability 3.0

Sustainability 3.0: "

Two frog success stories – Carmanah everGEN and ECOtality Level 2 Electric Vehicle Charger – are on display at Sustainability 3.0 in San Jose.

Carmanah everGEN 1710 Off-Grid Solar Lighting

At the Sustainability 3.0 "Beauty, Brains, and Brawn" exhibit at the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery in San Jose, frog has showcased its Carmanah everGen off-grid solar lighting work and its ECOtality electric vehicle chargers.

Assistant Professor at San Jose State University Leslie Speer explains the exhibit:

"Since the design industry first began discussing the environment and intertwined issues of sustainability some twenty years ago, the assumed thinking has been that function and aesthetic would be compromised for the good of the planet: theorists and practitioners alike were in agreement that if it was “green,” it was ugly. End users [consumers] underscored their concurrence with their pocket book. However, during the last two decades a revolution has been underway. Through trial and error, success and failure, innovation and iteration, a new generation of well-designed, high performance, and beautiful objects, environments, and experiences is at hand.

Designers have learned that sustainability is not as easy as it may have once seemed, but the process of digging deep, using data-driven thinking, and becoming more open to the cross-pollination of disciplines has allowed a meaningful result that is characterized by integrated products, services, and systems that are changing how people interact on a daily basis with the man-made environment. Locally, Silicon Valley has been on the cutting edge of technology for the last half century, and it is now emerging in the vanguard of a new and more comprehensive approach to sustainability, one that considers a more holistic view and takes a more systemic approach to addressing environmental challenges.

This exhibition will include a variety of examples of products, services, and systems created by a range of Bay Area designers-almost always working in teams-whose reach and influence now stretch globally. The display will deconstruct the challenges and successes in the dense development process, and reveal new ways of tackling environmentally friendly design as it codifies the themes of industrial handicraft, intelligent lifestyle, consumption redux, and social civility that emerge from the range of projects shown. Each project thoughtfully, holistically, and deeply considers the larger and complex ecosystem that surrounds it: material extraction, material processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair, maintenance, and end-of-life cradle-to-cradle analysis and methods at their best—are all used in each of these projects. The results are able to address larger issues that affect environmental, economic, and social concerns both locally and globally.

ECOtality Blink Level 2 Wall Mount EV Charger

For example, products from Bamboosero address aspects of materiality and economic development in rural Africa; beauty and functionality reign, although exquisite handcraft drives the process. Technology and the people who use it are the drivers of the ZEM House and Arbor, both designed by current SJSU students to redefine how sustainable technologies can drive lifestyle changes. Other work from frog design, method, Levi Strauss & Co., Public Bikes, and more will tell a rich story about how designers have evolved and how the work they do can redefine not only how we live, but how we can live more intelligently and more sustainably. Happily, in all of these projects, craft and beauty reign."

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