about

The Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) provides a process and a space to:

research, envision, innovate, create and test,

desirable and realisable concepts for sustainable products, services, built environments and lifestyles.


VEIL exists to:
> change the landscape of expectations of a sustainable future
> open-up the eco-innovation space in the Victorian economy

Through:
> interdisciplinary research and constructive speculation
> creative engagement with university design programs to re-invent the future
> capturing media and public attention with challenging concepts and visions
> seeding real world, 'vision-driven', experiments, to test new products, services, systems and life-styles
> influencing investment and social choices to expand the market for eco-innovation
> building capacity for professionals who will shape our future
> connecting Victoria's best university researchers to government policy processes

VEIL is funded by the Victorian government through the Victorian Sustainability Fund as part of the government's Sustainability Action Statement, 2006. VEIL is a project of the Australian Centre for Science Innovation and Society at the University of Melbourne. University partners include: Monash University - School of Design; RMIT University- School of Architecture and Design; Melbourne University -Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. Collaborating research groups include: Deakin University (Architecture); LaTrobe University (Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities, Bendigo); University of Melbourne (School of Social and Environmental Enquiry; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Water Research Centre).

VEIL has an Advisory Management Board. Members include: Jon Ward (Sustainability Victoria), Rebecca Falkingham (Department of Environment and Sustainability), David Hanna (Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development), Rob Adams (Director City Design, Melbourne City Council; Professorial Fellow Architecture, University of Melbourne), Mick Pears (Design Inc.)

Program Director: Professor Chris Ryan.
Project Coordinator: Dianne Moy
Sustainable Cities Research Officer: Ferne Edwards
Policy Research Manager: Kirsten Larsen

Victoria The Place To Be


The University Of Melbourne


Monash University


RMIT University






background

A sustainable future demands new knowledge and renewed creativity;
it depends ultimately on our ability to change direction.


We are in the early stages of a sustainability revolution. Climate change is forging a new global dialogue that may prove to be unlike anything before it in human history. That dialogue has already shifted from a focus on the scientific evidence of global warming to the need for urgent action.

What will be tested in the years to come is our ability to change direction.

Mitigating climate change (and adapting to a rise in global temperatures) points to an historic shift in the past trajectory of development. The transition to a sustainable economy, to a low carbon (and for Australia, a low water) economy, represents an unparalleled challenge to our systems of social and technical innovation. Incremental improvement – doing more efficiently what we currently do – will not be enough. We have only decades to transform the 'carbon' basis of our economy; the best current modelling suggests we will need a global reduction in annual CO2 production of between 60-80% (compared to current levels) by 2050. With such targets, we are not talking just about the re-construction of our world, but about its re-invention.

If ever we needed the spirit of entrepreneurial action, of creative destruction, it is now.

Change is needed rapidly; the effects of global warming (e.g. rainfall. or the incidence of significant weather events) appear to be accelerating; the slower the response the greater the long-term social and economic cost. We need to find ways to urgently overcome the ‘inertia of the market’, the inherently slow process of changing consumer and producer expectations and investments in future products, services, built environments and life-styles. We need a paradigm shift in the way that we think about systems of production and consumption, and about quality of life and prosperity.

This is what we mean by 'eco-innovation'.

VEIL proposes a new way to accelerate eco-innovation in Victoria. VEIL aims to influence the 'marketplace of ideas'; but more importantly the VEIL concept is based on a recognition that that marketplace is strongly shaped by concepts and visions of future goods and services emanating from producers and researchers. In fact the dynamic of a rapidly changing economy has meant that these future visions of goods and services now form an important 'conceptual market', increasingly vital for business competition. Future product concepts are widely marketed to test potential directions for production and to build the reputation of companies that need to be seen by their business and consumer audiences as being innovative and 'in command of future technology'. With modern communications and design skills these future concepts are increasingly 'real' and seductive; consumer response and feedback is critical to investment decisions.

This conceptual market is pervasive, shaping expectations of the future. But whilst this market may be innovative it is inherently conservative, generally allowing only for incremental change in terms of environmental performance.

VEIL works to bring public research and designers from public institutions (university design schools) into the conceptual market to provide a radical alternative set of visions of possibilities that extend beyond incremental change. The aim is to shape both consumer and producer expectations at the same time.

Those future visions are used to 'seed' 'vision-driven' projects for short-term development.

(To read something of the history of this idea - see "EcoLab - a jump towards sustainability (part 1 and 2). 2002" by Chris Ryan, in the library section of this site (reprinted from the MIT Journal of Industrial Ecology).

process

VEIL involves an evolving 'think-tank' referred to as 'the Hub'. At its core the Hub has design academics seconded from the design schools of Victorian Universities. Researchers from various university and government research groups, representatives from industry, from government and environment and community groups contribute to the deliberations of the Hub through a variety of structured processes.
Process 1
The work of the Hub combines research, analysis, design speculation and evaluation, resulting in reports, papers and presentations, identifying fruitful long-term (typically 25 year) scenarios for sustainable solutions (products, services, systems, life-styles, built environments and infrastructure), as well as ideas for near-term 'vision-driven' co-innovations. These long-term visions and eco-innovation ideas are also formulated as 'design studio' topics for the university design schools (and as student competitions). Through these design studios, ideas and visions are further researched and tested by hundreds of (final year) design students as part of their academic programs.
Process 2

University design studios involve students and staff in concept development and testing within a network of external organisations and actors (including those identified from the work of the Hub).
Process 3
At the end of these design studios, the student work is referred back to the VEIL hub and evaluated as a test of the ideas and visions that were developed. Student concepts/projects considered most relevant to the on-going Hub research are then further developed in a 'post production workshop' with the students, hub members and professional designers.
Process 4

The post-production workshop then has to elaborate the concepts so that the ideas, visions and stories of sustainable futures can be engagingly communicated through a variety of media (exhibitions, magazines, newspapers, and professional journals). The aim is to change public expectations and make different environments, products, services and life styles more alluring and desirable - to transform the 'conceptual market'.
Process 5


Hubs, design studios, post-production workshops and communications overlap in a repeating cycle, supported by a range of research projects and 'observatory' projects such as the SustainableMelbourne.com activity.

Practical experimentation in industry-linked projects that derive from future visions is another part of the VEIL agenda. Examples can be found within this web site.

project launch

In January 2007 the VEIL team, with the Department of Sustainability and Environment on the Victorian government and Sustainability Victoria, organised a week-long visioning process around a 25 year horizon for Melbourne.

45 members of government, drawn from all departments, along with a range of university researchers and 10 designers, considered the 'shape' of Melbourne 2032, focusing particularly on 'systems of provision' of energy, water and food. In the first five hour session the group responded to the document Melbourne 2032 - Looking Back [link] written for the occasion.

Ina series of 'cafe conversations' throughout that fist workshop session (following some initial lectures), the participants mapped out ideas for various glimpses of social and cultural life, infrastructure and the economy in 25 years time. Current government targets for reductions in CO2, for water consumption, waste reduction, and so on, were assumed to have been met.

In these initial deliberations the designers acted only as scribes and facilitators. They were:
> Malte Wagenfield (Industrial Design, RMIT University)
> Graham Crist (Architecture, RMIT University)
> Mark Strachan (Industrial Design, Swinburne University)
> Kirsty Fletcher (Architecture, Melbourne University)
> Clare Newton (Architecture Melbourne University)
> Mark Richardson (Industrial Design Monash University)
> Stephen Mushin (Architect and Industrial Designer)
> Michael Trudgeon (Architect and Industrial Designer)
> Chris Ryan (VEIL Director)
> Dianne Moy (VEIL project coordinator)
> Ferne Edwards (VEIL Sustainable Cities Officer)

The work from the first session became the 'brief' for a design studio for the next four days. The designers, supported by a local design consultancy, Crowd Productions, turned the ideas of the workshop into visions - glimpses - of new products, services, urban development and peoples lives. The research experts who attended the first workshop session were encouraged to drop in to the design studio and most spent many hours there over those four days. The included:
> Alan Johannson
> Alan Pears
> John Martin
> Suzie Goldsmith
> Dr Michael Arnold
> Peter Christoff Cameron Tonkinwise
> Mike Hill
> David Turnbull
> Michael Oke


The initial 2032 visions were then presented back to the same workshop and discussed and debated by the participants in another five hour 'cafe conversation'. Further design studio work then ensued and the resultant glimpses of M2032 can be found on this web site [link].
stakeholders
funding partners
Victoria The Place To Be

university partners
The University Of Melbourne Monash University RMIT University

industry partners
Crowd Productions