Louis-Philippe Pratte is a product designer. In his test The Y method – Thinking and experiencing deconsumptionhe denounces the responsibility of designers in this unbridled consumerism that swallows the planet and invites a pragmatic and philosophical reflection on the excesses of our own consumption.
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” We [les designers de produits] we are guilty. We are actually at the very heart of the crime. From the first pages of his first essay, Louis-Philippe Pratte drops the white gloves. Industrial designers, a group from which he does not exclude himself, participate in a programmed formal obsolescence which inevitably encourages us to consume more. “We are at the forefront of this scourge, because we know how to make you love a product to lose interest in it in a year”, he writes.
Does your car, model of the year 2018, seem to come from another era? It’s desired. When you bought it, the next generation was probably already drawn, he explains. So that at the time of the launch of the latter, yours seems obsolete. As part of his master’s degree in automotive design in Germany, he had the chance to do a long internship at Mazda. Despite the perfect mark received for his master’s thesis, he gave up his dream to return home, no longer convinced that this job was worth it.
After a stint at the Sid Lee agency, in 2009 he founded À Height d’homme, a company that creates ecological furniture. This reflection on the responsibility of designers and on the need to create durable products, requiring fewer materials and repairable, has never left her. “We are the ones who create consumption. It’s not a detail, and I’m not sure the designers are aware of that. We have an obligation to look at our profession with a critical eye. But it’s complex, because we want to sell. If I no longer sell, I no longer have a job. But I still encourage my clients to ask themselves if they need all this and if they could not do with less. “To those who express the need for more storage in their future kitchen (90% of his customers, he estimates), he asks to do the exercise of noting the objects they use in a week.
Because more storage also means more boxes, so more materials, a higher cost and a bigger environmental footprint.
Of course, it’s counter-intuitive for an entrepreneur to suggest their customers buy less. But the automaker who develops a car twice as light and lasts twice as long would find a clientele there, believes Louis-Philippe Pratte. “I think a product can have personality and last,” he says. To do this, we must also reflect on the way our ego expresses itself through the sources of identification that are the products. “It is there, the power of a product, he underlines. For some, it’s the automobile; for others, the clothes. For some people, having an old phone is humiliating. »
He is the cars. As critical as he may be towards this industry, he does not say he is ready to free himself from it. “I have a hybrid car. I have a hard time letting go of that. Being in an old house, phew, it’s not easy! “We all have our weaknesses, he continues, and that is why the method he proposes is progressive, not at all radical, and leaves room for imperfections.
The Y principle
As a good designer he is, he named it Y, a shapely symbol to sum up his message. It’s a crossroads and the need to make choices. There are two doors of entry: the reduction of our consumption and the union (interpersonal relations). Depending on our life situation, he proposes to choose three elements to work on, for example, the use of his car, his meat consumption, his online purchases, his amount of waste or his air travel. We start by dividing by two, then, possibly, by two again, and so on. And this, without ever losing sight of the gains that this approach brings us.
Reducing just to reduce, on a rational level, it cannot be sustainable. It can’t be the whole equation. There has to be a gain somewhere. Does it allow us to free up money for a project or to have time to learn something?
Louis-Philippe Pratte, designer
Union, on the other hand, refers to the relational aspect. “It’s creating a moment, and also sharing the purchase of a product. And these two elements come together in a vertical line that symbolizes the distancing of the ego and the path towards “disidentification”.
A road that is long and that he is still a long way from having crossed. “It’s a long process. I still struggle with all kinds of desires, but one of the main changes I see is that I wait. I really take more time [avant de faire un achat], then often, it passes. I know I still have a lot of work to do. But I find it more interesting to go in this direction than in the other. »
Reduction also needs designers, he argues. To make it alluring and inviting like this book, very nicely formatted.
The Y method – Thinking and experiencing deconsumption
Louis-Philippe Pratte
Cardinal
208 pages