Housing co-op work may be sustainable, but it’s not design

I’m not often astonished, but reading last week’s issue I was. There was a piece on seven housing cooperatives (News, DW 27 August). Aconsultancy that designed all seven of them claims sustainability as a specialism.

Well, I hope it is a specialist in sustainability because it certainly isn’t a specialist in design. The seven vacuous symbols have no meaning or craft. They’re absurd.

Even more absurd is the consultancy’s idea that proofs can be checked online. It is astonishing that anyone in design could confuse light with pigment and imagine a proof you can’t see, touch or smell is a proof of anything. It’s lazy, a false economy and disrespectful to the craft of the printer.

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