Contemporary designers’ work consists in creating objects to make people’s lives on earth easier, so in their approach, they must enforce new modes of collective construction and of relation to the world, in a spirit of responsibility and solidarity.

Ethical issues are then raised for the designers about the relevance and the justness of their creations; they have to balance the imperious need of services and scenarios that their creation offer, and the material object’s impact on the world all its life long, since its creation, its fabrication, its distribution, its use, its maintenance, its recycling or its disappearance.

The designer therefore needs to remain aware of the consequences of his “pencil stroke”; he has to solve a complex equation - creating a new product to meet useful needs, while controlling the economical, social, societal and environmental consequences.
At Strate Collège Designers, sustainable development is not a subject taught apart, as a specific option, it is an obvious transversal approach that is systematic and unavoidable.

Sustainable development also lies in the coherence and the global actions of the school: it comes first from a strong wish of the direction and of the academic staff, from an awareness of all the faculty and partners, and for the design students, it means taking into account the assets of sustainable development (and not of its constraints) since the very beginning of the product’s creation process.

For the designer, sustainable development is an attitude, a behaviour.