This book is a foray into connecting the dots of my learning of Sustainability during my first quarter at SCAD.
I explore this idea of a Rubik’s Cube as a means to facilitate and understand sustainability and its complexities through systems thinking approach.To understand and write about this, I have drawn on multiple references - examples, stories, ideas, quotes, websites, books and most importantly from experts, thinkers, and designers across the globe. My purpose here is to help simplify the way we think, understand, and perceive ideas on sustainability.
Applied theories of sustainability, Systems thinking,
Journal design, Storytelling, Visual Thinking
November 2020
When I first came across a Rubik’s Cube as a child, I was in awe of this seemingly simple puzzle. In the first glance, it looked very intuitive – a puzzle where the six individual colours had to be aligned to each face of the cube.But when I tried solving the cube, it seemed nearly impossible to solve.
Learning about sustainability and its complexities during my time here at SCAD has been equally exciting and astounding. Very much like learning to solve the Rubik’s Cube. Attending the maiden class on sustainability opened my eyes to the many things I was unaware of and a snapshot of how interconnected everything is.
I considered these complex challenges to be the the six coloured faces of a cube. Each face is made up of smaller cubes of the same colour. In essence, the goal of sustainability is about understanding how all of these are interconnected.
Our predominant view of complex challenges or society in general is looking at things separately. But in reality, it is about finding the hidden connections. So essentially, in the Rubik’s Cube analogy, it is about looking how these complex challenges are interconnected. It is about integrating social, ecological, and economical domains.
Sustainability is a system, a Rubik’s Cube with different elements. In order for us to act, we have to understand the elements and the interrelationships, to know how a system works. Some elements may be complementary, and they make an interdependent system. This is where we look at what systems thinking is and how it can lead us to a sustainable future
Humans are visual storytellers. From pre-historic cave paintings to magazines, installations and now even photographs on Instagram focus on visual storytelling. Our brains are wired for visuals. Visual metaphors can make us challenge our own paradigms. These were the underlying principles that I had in mind while coming up with this analogy of Sustainability to a Rubik’s Cube.
By combining the understanding of systems thinking, power of visuals and mental models, designers can imagine possibilities for the future in ways that others are not likely to do. The possibilities are endless. We can look at sustainability as a 2X2, a 3X3, 4X4, 5x5 or something as complex as a dodecahedron Rubik’s cube. The possibilities are endless.
We can keep changing the non-existent boundaries of the sustainability system and look at it as a system within systems or as different systems. We have the ability to break the cube, and build it back the way we want, move the block, or remove one of the smaller cubes and restructure the system.
As Donella Meadows said- “We must do things,or at least see things and think about things,
in a different way.”
I leave you with this thought:
The ideal outcome of solving the sustainability cube would be having all the colours aligned and in perfect harmony. However, as we are part of a complex system, could our ideal outcome of solving the sustainability cube be - a scrambled cube with mismatched colours yet in harmony?