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D A W N   D A N B Y   explores the intersection of
design, sustainability and business. Which is a fancy way of saying
that she wants the things we make to benefit both people and the world.
An industrial designer by training, she's a boundary-spanner and synthesist who has acted as a cross-disciplinary designer, strategist, art director,
project manager, producer and artist.
"As a designer, Danby's goals are down to earth and
practical: to develop environmentally sustainable systems and products
that change the way we experience the things around us."
(Julia
Dault put it nicely.)
Dawn holds a design degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (2000), and an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (2007).
She apprenticed in green building and policy with
the Fisk-Vittori team at CMPBS, and in furniture design with Macek Furniture. She
often collaborates with international artist Noel Harding on Windsor,
Ontario's Green
Corridor initiative, where she helped teach an interdisciplinary
course at the University of Windsor. She designed a $3.5M
tree-covered, wind-powered pedestrian bridge on the US-Canada border, has developed closed-loop manufacturing strategies for a
leading outdoor footwear manufacturer, and helped establish a public art master plan for a major american airport.
Dawn has been a contributor to WorldChanging.com since just after it began, connected
by luck, geography and circumstance during the early Viridian heyday.
She's a co-author of WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century,
and has spoken at TEDGlobal 2005: Ideas big enough to change the
world (Oxford UK), Doors of Perception (Delhi), Subtle Technologies (Toronto), and ICFF (NYC). A Canadian liaison
for the o2 Global
Sustainable Design Network (Toronto/Ontario), she also occasionally
maintains her sustainable/design/portal as a resource site for product
designers. In 2007, her team was awarded a competition fellowship with the Royal Society of Arts (UK) and was a runner-up in Metropolis magazine's NEXT Generation design competition.
Other hats: secret identity as a medical illustrator for numerous books and journals, specializing in
women's health; former and future art-maker and singer.
A Torontonian living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dawn works on sustainable design strategy and marvels at the sunlight. Aylanto, her design consultancy, is named for the
the ailanthus altissima, best of the urban ruderal species.
Invasive, heatseeking, alley-dwelling and concrete-devouring, they
delight in inhabiting and remediating a broken landscape.
email
barking crickets = small things making loud noises (clearly
a joke that got out of hand.)
L A T E L Y . . .
Moved from Toronto to the San Francisco Bay Area. Took the long road overland. Canada is so beautiful.
Beeline

The Beeline project is a system for decreasing the impact of food distribution and supporting local farmers. Initially developed
with Jyoti Stephens (of Natures' Path) and Mary Rick (of BALLE), Beeline won the RSA
Dott07 Food Information Systems Design Competition. Beeline was featured in RSA Journal's June 2007 Issue:
Design For Life, by Trish Lorenz.
We were Runners-Up in Metropolis' NEXT Generation Design Competition and were featured in Metropolis, May 2007: The Power of Youth, by Rebecca Cavanaugh. Click images for PDF downloads.
The Beeline project has evolved into a partnership with Ecotrust's Food and Farms team. More here.
WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century
...was released on November 1st 2006. I wrote about sustainable
product design, materials innovations, RFIDs, design for development, green computers, art and tech, product-service systems, books,
collaborative design and more. Foreward by Al Gore + Introduction by
Bruce Sterling. Reviewed by Bill
McKibben in the New York Review of Books. Buy it at your local
bookstore, if you can; or at Amazon, if you like.
Green Living
Profiled in 7 Eco Heroes Determined to Make a Difference
cover story by Julia Dault, in the Autumn/Winter 2006 edition of Green Living.
H A P P E N I N G S
> Design Green Now. Speaker. San Francisco 9 April 08
> Respond|Design: Make it Better Design Symposium, Rhode Island School of Design. Speaker. Providence Rhode Island 14 March 08
> SXSW Interactive: Visualizing Sustainability. Speaker. Austin Texas 11 March 08
> Metropolis Conference @ ICFF / Design Entrepreneurs: Rethinking
Energy. Speaker + panelist. New York 21 May 07
> SWITCH: Solar & Wind
Initiatives Towards Change. Speaker. Toronto 17 April 07
>
Doors of Perception:
Juice. Speaker. Delhi 28 Feb - 4 March 07
> WorldChanging Book Tour: Toronto. Co-host. 14 November 06
> Net Impact Professionals
Summit. Panelist. Chicago 27-29 October 06
> Sustainable Innovation 06. Writer. Chicago 23-24 October 06
a y l a n t
o
is my studio: design + sustainability + business.
s u s t a i n a
b l e / d e s i g n / p o r t a l *
(halve your cake & eat it
too): Since small objects can leave a long impact trail in their wake,
this overblown links-list is devoted to sustainable product design: the
eco-architecture of small things. All of this ephemera started to
accumulate. Perhaps you could use it.
* Due for some housecleaning
g r e e n   c
o r r i d o r
is a groundbreaking, artist-led initiative in
Windsor, Ontario's rust-belt borderlands, an urban sustainable
redevelopment along the international bridge corridor that links Canada
to the US. Beginning at the Ambassador Bridge, the sculptured
environmental district extends two kilometres in length along Huron
Church Road, several hundred metres in width, and reaches infinitely
skyward.
Initiated by artist Noel Harding, the Green Corridor
re-imagines an unfriendly urban zone as a work of art, inserting green
technologies into blight; harnessing wind, water and solar power; and
developing the expansion and expression of plantings, wetlands, sculpted
land forms and green space along the length of the corridor. The results
address air and water quality, health concerns, quality of life and
education - and in so doing, re-assert the beauty of architecture,
design and landscape.
A F F I L I A T I O N
> worldchanging.com celebrates and amplifies the tools,
models, and ideas that will lead us to a more sustainable and just
world. An early contributor and close collaborator since 2003; former board
member.
> o2 canada is
the growing canadian base for o2, a
loosely-knit global network of sustainable design professionals,
practitioners, advocates, and geeks. We welcome your energy and ideas.
> bainbridge graduate
institute is a cutting-edge school teaching business for the 21st century. I received my MBA in
Sustainable Business there in June 2007.
C O L L A B O R A T I O N
> fauxvea / paul waggoner
: Visual-effects artist and stereoscopy wizard. Collaborator on medical illustrations, robot dogs, web development and
massive civic architecture.
> noel harding
studio : mentor and fellow-traveler, international artist,
visionary.
C R O S S - P O L L I N A T I O N
on flickr
del.icio.us/dawnd
F O R M E R L Y
> spod
: Biofuture Robot Dog, for the Viridians and GBN. Winner of
Viridian Design Competition 2002.2.
> cmpbs : The Center for
Maximum Potential Building Systems was an entire second education, on
ecological theory and practice, green architecture and planning. In 2001 I
co-designed their website and brand identity.
> macek
furniture a very good year was spent working with master craftsman
Mark Macek, rocking to his exceptional stack of sawdusty CDs. His new
macek solid arts work is to die
for.