Charlotte McCurdy at Material Health: Design Frontiers, November 2019
Interdisciplinary designer Charlotte McCurdy’s presentation “deCARBONIZING: Materials & Climate”, addresses the incredible role that materials play in our global paradigm shift away from certain carbon emissions. McCurdy highlights that ⅓ of global carbon emissions come from using fossilized lifeforms as materials, with the other ⅔ being burned as energy. In McCurdy’s view, we have an incredible opportunity to choose alternative forms of carbon as the basis of our materials.
McCurdy asks, “what would it feel like to get back into a present-tense relationship with the sun?”
Meaning what if designers started working with actively and regeneratively produced forms of carbon such as seaweed. This would require designers, in particular, to shift away from working with cement, steel, plastic, and materials that result in massive deforestation, and begin experimenting with new material solutions made of sustainable carbon sources.