Image: <a href="http://rwphotographic.com">Raina Kirn & Wilson Barry</a>
For Dawn Danby, design isn’t just about objects. “There is so much stuff — too much stuff,” she says from her Toronto studio. I’m interested in tool-sharing, co-op structures, providing people with things they don’t necessarily need to own.”
Danby trained as an industrial designer at the Rhode Island School of Design, which is where she became interested in the ecological impacts hidden in product-design decisions. These days, she focuses on sustainable design as it relates to the urban environment. Along with Canadian artist Noel Harding and visual arts professor Rod Strickland, Danby has been an integral member of the Green Corridor Project, a redevelopment of the bridge corridor linking Canada and the U.S. at the Windsor-Detroit crossover. The team of planners, building and landscape architects, educators, city planners and residents are working to turn the two-kilometre-long concrete jungle into a regenerative green zone.
As well as her design work, Danby frequently contributes to worldchanging.com, an online environmental magazine. One of the site’s projects is a book called WorldChanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century (published by Harry N. Abrams Books), with over 50 contributors. Danby has written several essays on sustainable design in the industrial world — appropriate, since she’s currently a candidate for an MBA in sustainable business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute.
As a designer, Danby’s goals are down to earth and practical: to develop environmentally sustainable systems and products that change the way we all experience the built environment.
This is part of Enviro Heroes, a continuing series spotlighting the efforts of individuals determined to make a difference.
by Julia Dault
Green Living Blogs
