DESIGN: The pieces of the puzzle are finally falling into place: eco-design is now an integral part of innovative business, branding and entrepreneurship

According to trend gurus at trendwatcher.com, 2008 will be the year when environmentally-conscious design completes the journey from design ugly (the Toyota Prius), through design chic (think Edun), to ecological design icons like the new Honda FCX Clarity, a car whose green credentials are expressed in beautiful lines and curves.

However, in reality, that analysis might be optimistic and slightly wide of the mark.In a small corner of central London, an experimental bike shed might give more clues to the immediate future of ecologically-driven design.

In Holborn, close to the Central St Martins School of Art and Design, researchers are busy figuring out how, in a modern metropolis, public policy can encourage greater use of the bicycle. Plenty of people want to ride them into work. The problem is bike theft.

Bike theft illustrates the likely lateral directions that environmental design might have to take. Big ticket designs like the FCX grab the headlines, but small ticket designs are more the coalface of the design industry, the place where the everyday entrepreneurial euros are to be earned and where innovation matters to most professionals.

The single biggest barrier to more environmentally-friendly urban mobility is to be found neither in car preferences nor bike lanes, but in crime. Bike theft in Ireland is not well documented, but it seems to have been rising at around 75 per cent per annum according to Garda estimates.

In the UK, according to a study by insurers Direct Line, 1,200 bikes a day - 400,000 per year - are stolen, and that seems to be the tip of the iceberg. An experiment by the company, locking up bikes in 10 major British cities overnight, found the majority had disappeared by morning and half lasted less than an hour in the capital London.

In Holborn, the Bikeoff research initiative is looking at how to design the modern bike shed. It's hardly an iconic project, but something as mundane as the shed might become an unobtrusive but essential part of the environmental armory of the future. It was, afterall, a humble mould in the form of antibiotics, rather than heart transplant surgery, that revolutionised medicine.

Bike sheds are the kind of project that could easily spin-off into environmentally useful projects for Irish entrepreneurs, according to Gerard O'Neill, head of Dublin-based Amarach consulting, because they are low tech, essential and low risk.

"I think we are at the stage now," says O'Neill, "where we're ready for a high level of innovation, but innovation is incredibly risky and Ireland is a very small market in which to sell. It's important for Irish entrepreneurs in this area to have an eye on what's happening elsewhere."

"Elsewhere" is not just about geography. A headline design project such as the FCX and the Bahrain World Trade Centre with its twin integrated windmills are good PR as well as innovative, but their context for many designers is a business decision-making climate that still ignores many of the major environmental issues.

Jim Northover of Lloyd Northover is one of the fathers of modern brand design and a brand custodian of marques such as Porsche and Lexus.

"I think brands have accepted the importance of ecological issues for some time," he suggests.

"As designers, we challenge them at a practical level, for example if a brand is building a supermarket, is it in the right place and what will its carbon footprint be, but what we're not challenging them on is the higher level."

It's at the highest levels of design that ecological issues are yet to make an impact, according to Northover. "If we're working with an airport, we provide ideas on eco-friendly lighting, but the whole operation will increase the number of flights that go up into the air, so in effect we are party to adding to the carbon emissions. One feels that one is really tinkering with the small things and not addressing major issues."

That sentiment is echoed by Barry Sheehan incoming president of the Institute of Designers in Ireland. "What's happening is that most companies don't do anything until they're forced to," says Sheehan.

And at the pinnacle of design, the luxury goods market came in for criticism in a Wordwide Fund For Nature report, Deeper Luxury, (WWF, November 2007) for its lack of environmental responsibility.

None of the top 10 luxury brands scored more than average on ethical and environmental issues and most scored well below.

Between the bike shed and the airport, the Rolex and the padlock, designers are wrestling with their role in propagating ecologically unsound projects even while they are creating elegant solutions for their clients. It means those in search of ecologically well-informed design might have to search in the most unlikely places if they are to find activity that has an unambiguous benefit.

Service design agency Livework, for example, has piloted a new interactive TV channel that allows house occupants to access a live account of their energy use, one that tells them where they have left lights on overnight, and gauge the outdoor temperature and suggest changes to central heating system settings. It's not necessarily pretty or iconic, but it does seem useful.

"We're also experimenting with a zero cost loan for energy efficiency improvements," says Livework sustainability designer Ben Reason. "The loans are administered by a credit union. The loan is paid off out of the savings on energy costs."

Equally iconic designer James Dyson is focused not so much on the next concept vacuum cleaner, or hand dryer, but on radical energy savings in his existing product lines. "I think Dyson's main challenge is to look at ways at reducing the environmental impact of our machines without reducing their performance," Dyson explains, quoting the new Airblade hand dryer as an example that is "far more energy efficient than conventional hand dryers which take an eternity to dry hands - if you bother to wait."

In Denmark, iconic design house Skibsted Ideation believe many of the most valuable design innovations already exist. It's just that we've spent decades experimenting with the non-ecological.

Skibsted recently designed a new range of cutlery for ethical start-up Mateer. "As designers, our biggest contribution ecologically was in researching the materials," says design chief Jens Martin Skibsted. "What we found was the most ecologically sound material for cutlery is stainless steel. It's been used for centuries and it's the best . . . Many aspects of environmental design are already in place or at least exist. We just need to look at them in the right way."

Barry Sheehan picks up the theme: "Washing powders that are produced in concentrate form take less transportation; the move away from meat eating is an environmental plus and has a knock on in packaging design. What people wear will have an impact in 2008. People are more willing to walk to work in casual clothes. That's impacting on office design because you have to provide washing facilities for people who arrive sweaty. So we need to be designing clothes for mobility and work rather than wearing suits," Sheehan says.

Designers are busy with the small pieces of the jigsaw, but concerned equally that the larger picture requires more commitment from Government and industry. As designers are asked increasingly to create a compelling ecological expression for a product or service, the tendency is to re-contextualise design, moving it away from product to more holistic concerns.

"Consumers are more and more critical of brands and businesses," says Jim Northover. "They're deconstructing what brands are saying to them and looking beyond the façade." As they "deconstruct" or pick holes in brand messages and in the designs that express a brand's values, consumers are left with very little to guide them on alternatives."

"It means driving up quality," says Skibsted, "so that the products we design will last. This is where our responsibility lies.

"There is a divide between those who design for an economy where replacement is the norm and those who design products that are of high enough quality that they don't need replacing." This latter approach, he argues, is the holistic and sustainable one, but also a philosophical approach that underpins some economies and not others.

Skibsted argues that in the Anglo-Saxon liberal school of thought, which is strong on letting things happen as opposed to the continental model which favours planning what should happen, the market favours regular redundancy in products and their parts. The more parts that wear out, the more opportunities to replace them. Designers have delivered to that brief building regular redundancy into the very fabric of everyday products such as light bulbs, batteries and white goods.

That kind of design ethos needs to be rejected, but replacement supplies are the bedrock of profitability for many companies. Now might be the time to take a more system-wide look at everyday products and design them to last.

The growing body of critique from consumers allied to the more recent focus on climate change at a tipping point may produce radical change in design during 2008. But it's clear from the views of many designers that the big idea might be to take many small steps.

It's hardly a holistic recipe that designers like Northover and Skibsted are calling for, but at present it seems the bigger questions are going begging.

Design in 2008

Some of the leading names in design predict what the coming year holds in store

Gerard O'Neill, Amarach Consulting:

"Research shows that Irish consumers are driven by a mixture of growing awareness around climate change through to incentives like rising energy prices, and are looking for goods to replace what they currently use . . . But I'd be wary about going too far. I just feel people will say one thing and do another."

Barry Sheehan, Institute of Designers in Ireland:

"I don't think 2008 will be a tipping point for design. I think people this year will sit back and ask is all the environmental design a marketing ploy or is it for real. I do think 2009 will be the tipping point. The changes you'll see will be cultural changes, for example that we work more with people from different countries without traveling. People wearing more comfortable clothes rather than suits. Clothes made for carrying computers. Many such cultural changes."

Ben Reason, Livework, pioneers of service design:

"It was very difficult to talk to clients about the environment six years ago. Now people are coming to us - in a way we're quite surprised. They see the environment issue as a design issue, but also as a brand issue, so it's something they need to communicate as well as to do something about."

Jim Northover, pioneer of brand design:

"One feels one is tinkering at the edges, but not addressing the major issues. We're pulling levers to help but not sure they are the right levers."

Jens Martin Skibsted, Danish design guru:

"Yes, people want more green design but a part of it really is just marketing. What I experienced a long time ago with design is the customer asking how can we get a good design appeal. Now, it's 'how can I get a green design appeal?' 'Will I be portrayed as green' is more important than how effective the design is."