Chair, Design Thinking and Sustainability
School of Design Ecologies
Parsons The New School for Design
tonkinwc@newschool.edu

Cameron Tonkinwise's research and professional activities have brought together the philosophies of design and sustainability. His work centers on the belief that current societal unsustainability has much to do with a widespread misunderstanding of the nature of design. He believes that we need to create strong links so that people understand the impact they have on the environment so that we can then more fully understand our predicament and facilitate the radical social changes needed to rectify it. His research has focused on the design of commercial and non-market systems of shared product use, exploring how the emerging discipline of service design might enable the development of less-material dependanteconomies. Current research is both more historical and more conceptual, exploring variability in perceptions of convenience and autonomy when shifting from "ownership" to "usership."