Eco-design, new paradigm?

Text: József Zalavári DLA

Economic and environmental crises that occur periodically warn us of dangers of product development dominated by marketing and its unsustainability in the long run. A latent change of paradigms took place in design management and product development at the turn of the century. Design has acquired its new functional system of viewpoints from ecology based on the evolution-based etymology of products and an enforced consideration of the harmful effects of products on the environment. As opposed to the forceful ambition to completely new, the re-analysis of previous generations of products and the integration of the well-functioning components in them, the preservation of their structural and formal characteristics and their integration into the new products gained importance and significance. The life-cycle approach, the system-oriented methodology of design going beyond „from cradle to cradle” lifecycles develops our objects in the fractal-nature power field of correlations and mutual influences between society, nature and economy.