Cultivating ecological design intelligence

Whole Earth Review, Spring, 1995 by Stuart Cowan

The extraordinary meeting that triggered this birth announcement was marked by a unanimous, enthusiastic commitment to an effort that is urgently necessary and essentially right. I haven't felt this good about a work party since Stewart Brand and friends convened the Alloy conference in 1969.

This report marks the beginning of a regular Ecological Design feature in Whole Earth Review. People acting as designers manage the application of technology, the job needs to be done with more subtlety and understanding of consequences. WER has always attended this subject, now it's a major focus for us. We welcome good news, opinions, and suggestions for articles.

DESIGN CONNECTS CULTURE AND NATURE through flows of energy and matter. If we take ecology as the basis for designing our products, buildings, and communities, we can preserve natural capital while meeting human needs.

A new vision of ecological design is emerging, one that brings together architects, planners, engineers, farmers, artists, and many others in a shared search for the nitty-gritty design details of a sustainable culture.

Just as architecture has traditionally concerned itself with problems of structure and aesthetics, or as engineering with safety and efficiency, we need to consciously cultivate an ecologically sound form of design that is consonant with the long-term survival of all species. Ecological design proposes a partnership with nature in which environmental impacts are minimized by carefully integrating designs within wider living systems. Examples include wastewater treatment systems that employ the inherent purifying capacities of artificial wetlands, industrial "ecosystems" in which all wastes become "food" for other processes, and agricultural systems whose structures mimic wild ecosystems. Ecological design provides a coherent framework for redesigning our systems of energy, water, food, shelter, waste, and manufacturing.

This conference was convened to find the next step. Ecological design offers a rich source of solutions and research directions, but its practitioners have lacked a common forum to share their ideas.

The circle of introductory statements raised key themes. How should ecological design be taught, and what kind of jobs can trained students and professionals reasonably expect to hold? How can we garner institutional support for ecological design? How can we create new kinds of accounting, curricula, ecological enterprise, and interdisciplinary networks? As David Orr emphasized, "We need to drive the definition of ecological design to clarity." There was a consensus that ecological design is not an "alternative" to the dominant forms of technology and design, but the best path for their necessary evolution towards ecological viability.

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS

* We need a "Do Tank" to teach and do ecological design.

* What is the institutional base to get ecological design mainstream?

* How can we create opportunities to make a living doing ecological design?

* How do design professionals make ethical choices?

* Perhaps we should call it the Society for Ecological Design Arts.

* Create a learning environment that matches the context.

* The insurance industry may provide an opportunity for bioremediation.

* Find a quality of life to believe in and be nourished by.

* Nature is the standard for design: we need ecological accounting.

* College-age people who "got it" need a place to use it.

* How do we build a constituency for tectonic change?

* Educate and retrain older students and practicing designers.

* What works is taking care of local community.

* The transition is here and we have the time to make it.

* Produce examples that cut across disciplines.

* Design innovative educational institutions.

* Create networks and intellectual family.

* Redesign infrastructure using ecological design.

* Convince sources of power that they need what we've got.

* We need to satisfy people's emotional need for beauty as well as scientific logic.

* Seed pods of change need to come together.

* Establish local enterprise centers for the ecological design arts.

Ecological Design Nodes

To date, ecological design has been carried forward by isolated "nodes" -- nonprofit research institutes, individual design practices, and special groups within universities. These nodes are deeply committed to their surrounding communities and bioregions. Their work deals with the essentials: energy, water, food, shelter, waste, ecological accounting, environmental justice, and spirituality. As conference participants described their work, it became clear that a formal network of nodes would be enormously valuable. The following nodes, each run by a conference participant, give a good sense of the range of current work in ecological design.

Bioregional Building -- At the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Austin, Texas, Pliny Fisk and colleagues are creating a bioregional design science. They are learning how to build homes with climate-adapted local materials that produce their own energy and water and treat their own wastes. By examining the entire life cycle of materials and products, they are finding ways to add value without leaving the bioregion, turning waste into a resource in the process.