Anti-trend: Resilient Design and the Art of Sustainable Living

Anti-trend investigates resilient, anti-trendy living and design as viable alternatives to the insatiable “more wants more” mantra of consumerism. The overall purpose with this book is to encourage designers and consumers to take responsibility for overproduction and overconsumption, and to alter unsustainable production and behavioral patterns.

The anti-trendy design-object is designed to be used. It is created to nourish the user aesthetically on a long-term or short-term basis. It is alive in the sense that it is made to develop in accordance with human life—by either being alterable or perishable. The anti-trendy object supports a life worth sustaining. A life that contains wholesome rhythms and edifying challenges and isn’t dependent on consumption for pleasure.

Anti-trendy living is a natural, fulfilling, and sustainable way to live. It may have many different expressions but is characterised by authenticity and meaningfulness. Reduction of consumption and long-term usage of things is a vital part of anti-trendy living—it involves mending and caring and maybe even sharing.

Through an analysis of resilience and sustainability life in general and in design-objects the themes of the book unfold: intuition and anti-trend research, a life worth sustaining, existentialist despair, raw and resilient aesthetics, sustainable storytelling, legitimisations for designing products in a world with too many things, democratic sustainability, craft innovation, civil disobedience, and collaborative consumption.