Reducing Carbon Footprint of Pop-Art Chair Designs By Ecodesign Strategies

Reducing the footprint of industrial pieces since the design stage is a modern concern of practitioners and scholars. In the context of industrial design, the ecodesign approach aims at minimizing environmental impact from the early stages of the product lifecycle. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a widely used methodology to evaluate environmental impacts, relying on the cradle-to-grave metaphor. The purpose of this article is to identify how and to what extent LCA can reduce the carbon footprints of products in the early stage, the design. The research method is the multiple case study. The research object is a set of nine pop-art chairs. The CCaLC software supported the study. The study reviewed the original designs aiming at reducing carbon footprints by relying on eco-design strategies. The findings show that expressive reduction can be achieved, even by preserving vintage features, aesthetic values, and usefulness. The study concludes that is possible, owing to eco-design strategies, to significantly reduce the carbon footprints of design products without jeopardizing performance.