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Johnson Controls / Royal College of Art Research Project Featured at London Design Festival 2011

Johnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions’ joint research project with the Royal College of Art (RCA), called Sustainable Cultures – Creating Greener Workplaces for All, featured as part of the London Design Festival, 2011.

RCA, Research Associate, Lottie Crumbleholme presented preliminary findings from the research to a packed lecture theatre at the RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. Lottie outlined four employee attitudes regarding sustainability in the workplace, which she labeled “sustainability cultures”. The cultures she identified were the workplace 'Libertarian', 'Campaigner', 'Pragmatist' and 'Housekeeper'.


These four cultures, she argued, represented the types of opinion that companies would have to consider when trying to change employee behavior, when implementing sustainable policies. The next stage in the project will be to create a toolkit for targeting these different cultures for companies to engage with their employees.

Catherine Greene Senior Associate at the RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design said: “'We all understand sustainability differently, but this can cause tension in the workplace when we try to put sustainable initiatives in place. Our research aimed to understand people's different motivations so that we will be better able to provide sustainable strategies that deliver real change long-term'.

The RCA exhibition, The Problem Comes First, also featured a range of design projects being undertaken by the research team at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. Each project leader showcased a real life problem and then gave a design solution to it.

Other projects included:
  • Loud and Clear: Making Hearing Care Inclusive (research partner Oticon)
  • Sensory Preferences: Housing Design for Adults with Autism (The Kingwood Trust and The Monument Trust and Being)
  • Out of Order: The Problem with Public Toilets for Older People (TACT3)
  • Window on the World: Video Conferencing for Older People (Cisco)
  • In the Shade: Lighting Local Urban Communities (Megaman Charity Trust Fund and Paviom)
  • Talking People: Reshaping Community and Communication (Research in Motion / BlackBerry)
  • Redesigning the Ambulance: Improving Mobile Emergency Healthcare (NHS London, London Ambulance Service, Imperial College St. Mary’s NHS Trust, University of the West of England)
  • Healthy Pregnancy: Redefining the Experience (Clearblue)
  • Better Care Homes: Designing for Different and Changing Abilities (Bupa)
  • Necksafe: Designing Better Support for Spinal Injury Patients (National Institute for Health Research, Bath Institute of Medical Engineering, Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, University of the West of England, Great Western Ambulance Service, i2R Medical)
The RCA exhibition was formally opened by Jonathan Scheele, Head of Representation for the European Commission in the UK. Its curators were Jeremy Myerson, Helen Hamlyn Professor of Design and Rama Gheerawo of the RCA.

Jeremy Myerson and Catherine Greene from the RCA presented the ‘Sustainable Cultures – Creating Greener Workplaces for All’ research at the CoreNet Global Summit in Paris.

The RCA is one of the world’s most influential postgraduate universities specialising in art and design. Its alumni include Sir James Dyson, David Hockney, Tracey Emin, Idris Khan, and Sir Ridley Scott.

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