Saving the world, one design at a time

Emily Pilloton is the founder of Project H Design—the H stands for “Humanity, Habitats, Health and Happiness.” The two-year-old nonprofit organization provides an outlet for hundreds of socially conscious designers and their creative solutions for everything from homelessness to transporting water in the developing world.

Pilloton’s book, Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, came out last fall. Her Design Revolution Road Show, which started last week, is a traveling exhibition and lecture series that will visit 28 schools across the country over the next couple months. I talked to Pilloton before she hit the road in her Airstream. (See below for a clip of Pilloton on Colbert last month.)

Where do your ideas come from?

All our projects are local, in seven different places, so it’s about understanding a local community. We figure out where the problems are and where design can have the biggest impact. Our Los Angeles chapter was doing a lot of research on homelessness in downtown L.A. and interviewing residents in homeless shelters. Instead of designing tents or pods, we came up with Abject Object, which teaches the women at the Downtown Women’s Center to design, make and sell creative goods from reclaimed materials. It’s hands-on instead of handout.

One of your tag lines is that you design “with, not for.” What’s that mean?

I’m trained as a designer. You’re trained to design for clients. I used to work for a furniture company and we’d sit in a room, draw stuff up, show it to the client, and they’d hate it. You’d go back and forth, and eventually you’d get it right. The model designed for social impact doesn’t work that way. The homeless example—we know nothing about what it’s like to be homeless, so we needed to work closely with the homeless women, the end users. You could argue that all designers should be working with not for, but for these projects there’s a certain level of humility. You don’t want to go in as, “I’m a designer, I’m going to solve all your problems for you.”

You’re taking off on an Airstream road trip. What’s up with that?

It started as a book tour, but I wasn’t into the Barnes & Noble book signing. I wanted to target students, youth and designers. It started as a joke. I live in an Airstream, so I thought, let’s drive it around the country. The goal is to take the show on the road. There are 115 things in the book that are amazing, and we have 40 of them to show, so why not bring them to the doorsteps of the next generation of designers? It’s part exhibition, part high school and college series and part raising awareness of the power of design to the general public.

How’s Project H funded?

It’s all volunteer. Technically I’m a volunteer. In 2008 we had 20 projects with a $44,000 budget. Last year, it was 22 projects for $60,000, and that money comes almost entirely from individual donations. I don’t love the model, but we have 300 volunteers and I know they are all committed because they are giving up their spare time to do this. The projects with the most severe constraints—like $500, three months, four volunteers and three homeless women—are the most interesting.

What’s your next project?

My road trip is actually a move from Half Moon Bay, Calif., to Bertie County, one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. The Bertie County School District has given us carte blanche to help fix their entire district using design. We already installed Learning Landscape math playgrounds, which is an outdoor system made from reclaimed tires buried in the ground. We’ve also done three of their computer labs and we’re setting up a design-build program in the high school.