Sustainability, environmental impact, green design, urban sprawl - all terms that have, in recent years, become part of the collective consciousness in the ongoing dialogue about climate change and global warming. Enabling Solutions for Sustainable Living presents student work that explores these issues and exemplifies the application of "enabling solutions."

Here, members of a new generation of designers - students from the University of Calgary's Faculty of Environmental Design - come together to identify some of the sustainability challenges of contemporary suburban living. Exploring such issues as quality of life, community cohesiveness, and environmental impacts of city living, workshop participants present their research graphically, illustrating key concepts, the resources required, and the desired outcomes. In addition to the student work showcased here, Enabling Solutions includes essays by Ezio Manzini, Stuart Walker, and Barry Wylant that contextualize the central ideas and elaborate on the theoretical basis for the workshop.

Ezio Manzini is a Professor of Design at Politecnico di Milano, where he coordinates the doctorate in design program. He is a visiting lecturer at the Tohoku University (Japan) and at the Wuxi University (China). His work is focused on strategic design, service design, design for sustainability and social innovation in everyday life.

Ezio Manzini's profile page

Stuart Walker is a Professor of Industrial Design at the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary and is currently Co-Director of Imagination@Lancaster, a creative research lab at Lancaster University, UK. He is also Visiting Professor of Sustainable Design at Kingston University, UK. He is author of Sustainable by Design and his designs for sustainability have been exhibited internationally.

Stuart Walker's profile page

Barry Wylant is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Design program at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design. He has extensive professional experience in new product design and development.

Barry Wylant's profile page