Kim Hill this morning

I listened with interest this morning to Kim Hill interviewing designer David Trubridge. An intriguing conversation, it left me wondering if there is an unfair expectation in the media for local design businesses to be our flag bearers for eco-sustainability. Positioning an ecological and sustainable ethos above the economic realities of running a business as ethically as possible – in the face of a domestic economy reliant on cheaply imported goods – is a challenge that most mainstream businesses manage to successfully avoid. So why does contemporary design seem to cop it? Are we looking for the answers to our oil and pollution problems in designing fancy lightshades? It is a difficult territory, so hats off to Hill for taking the time to chat with Trubridge, who’s website has the contemporary buzzword of ‘sustainability’ stamped all over it.

David Trubridge is a successful local design business inspired by native flora and fauna of New Zealand and as such is promoted heavily to the domestic market (as well as internationally). He employs intelligent local designers and makers, as well as mostly local materials and production processes.

Trubridge’s company employs a profitable domestic business model in which New Zealanders can take confidence. Kim Hill uncovers – in stripping away some of the Trubridge PR veneer and deftly avoiding too much rhetoric about what Trubridge clearly perceives as our lack of national identity – that inasmuch as it could appear to be yet another a design brand built up on a confusing blend of new age hyperbole, glossy magazines and featuring in important public museum collections, this business has its roots in the old ethos of skilled craftspeople making things locally from available resources.

This is where the discussion becomes important. Sustainable making practices have always been around and seem to me extremely simple, elegant. It seems we almost need the whole ethos of this way of living repackaged, glamorised and even perhaps legislated.

At one stage in the conversation, Trubridge tells a simple yet interesting story about building a house in the early stages of his career, which relates to the direction of his present business. It is an interesting corollary for the ecologically sound remnants of ‘pre-oil’ economy design processes and the environmental issues which we are currently staring down the barrel of: “What’s interesting about that time was that we instinctively looked for the best solutions. We could go down and buy cheap pine and stuff at the hardware store, but we went to the recycling yards and bought teak decking from ships – things like this – we built the house sort of as the way builders had always done it in rural areas of Britain; stone buildings that last forever; that kind of attitude without thinking that’s what we did. It’s interesting that now looking back on it, that’s a real model for our times.”