What can a Swedish environmentalist tell us about the 1960s designers’ self-perception?

ICSID is a worldwide organization that protects and promotes the interests of the profession of industrial design. The organization was founded in 1957 by twelve national professional design associations, and has today over 150 members which represents about 150 000 designers. Among the members are professional Associations, educational institutions, government bodies and promotional societies from over 50 countries.

Through its (continuously revised) definitions of what industrial design is – and should be, ICSID has played an important part in the shaping of industrial design. ICSID's 1969 conference, «Design, Society and the Future», attracted over 1000 delegates as well as a compound group of lecturers who discussed the designer’s role in the society of the future. Among the speakers was also the Swedish chemist and environmentalist Hans Palmstierna, who gave the lecture «International Environmental Problems and the Future». Palmstierna had risen to fame in Scandinavia after the publication of his popular science book Plundring, svält, förgiftning (Plundering, hunger, poison) in 1967, a Swedish answer to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.  Through his severe critique of the exploitation of the earth and its resources, Palmstierna became a key initiator of the environmental debate in Sweden.

Palmstierna’s precence at the ICSID conference makes it relevant to examine his views on the design profession, and in my term paper I want to explore the following questions: What did Palmstierna consider to be the role of the designer in both the present and the future society? Were environmental issues discussed by other speakers, and if so, was it a prominent feature at the conference? And finally, what may the inclusion of Palmstierna to the conference program tell us about the (re)definition of the industrial design profession in the years around 1970?