After an incredible launch year in 2008, the London Design Festival’s sustainability center, greengaged, will be open again from September 21-15, 2009, with a full week of world-class events designed to help the design industry tackle the big issues around sustainable design. The event is hosted by the Design Council at their offices in Covent Garden, London.

Competition for greengaged places will be hot. Each day, 100 designers will take part in a series of debates, workshops, seminars, field trips and more — with each day taking a different theme. Everything is free of charge and can be booked online.

The week in view:

Monday:
Environmentally speaking, we’re in a bit of a mess, and we sort of know what we have to do: use less stuff whether it’s energy, materials or chemicals, cut carbon, relocalize and do things like trade in fairer ways. But we don’t. Ed Gillespie curates a day when we ask why is change happening so slowly, and what are the barriers, both behaviourally and in the context of design. This will be a day of challenges, questions and opportunities around the role of design in what we wear, what we eat, where we live and how we get around; food, fashion, homes and travel…provocative speakers, lively interactive debate and clothes-swapping: what more could you ask for?! The whole day will be hosted in partnership with the Talkaoke Wheel of Spiel, with live visualization from The People Speak webjockeys (No singing. No punch-ups).

Tuesday:
With a focus on the emerging structures of service design, author John Grant has curated a day looking at systems; why the fail and how we can redesign them. With a particular focus on banking, participants will be brainstorming new sustainable business models and presenting them to a dragon’s den from the banking system. It is impossible not be aware of by the continual rise and impact of new service networks; from Freecycle, Wikipedia and city car clubs through to transition towns. So, how can the design industry apply this approach of ‘holistic system design’ to benefit topical commercial issues?

Wednesday:
Ants can make zero waste, solar powered, sustainable architecture; how can we apply their ‘intelligence’ and 3.5 billion years of research and development to human focused, sustainable design? Join Michael Pawlyn, a pioneer of biomimetic architecture, and other prominent thinkers in this rapidly emerging area of design for this day of astounding talks and inspiring workshops.

Thursday:
Day four is a day to explore the fast moving convergence of craft values with the scale and possibility of mass production. The day involves hands-on creative thinking with break out workshops, and presentations to engage designers with a new approach to craft-based industrial processes.

Friday:
On the final day of greengaged, Dan Epstein, Head of Sustainability and Regeneration for the Olympic Delivery Authority is running a day on the use of natural and advanced materials in design. Through a series of debates and discussions he will be exploring issues and testing our preconceptions on how we define a sustainable material, what tools are available to help designers select sustainable materials and what support designers need when thinking about materials and design

Greengaged has been developed and organized by [re]design, thomas.matthews and the Sustainable Design Research Centre at Kingston University in association with the Design Council and supported by Saint Gobain.