Ecological Design Sustainability and design
in the re-use of resources.
Resources
Air
Water
Wildlife
Fisheries
Vegetation
Landscape
This layering of material depicts a green roof.
The Robie House, in Chicago, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
"intentional shaping of matter, energy and process to meet a perceived need or desire. Design is the hinge that inevitably connects culture and nature through exchanges of materials, flows of energy, and choices of land use."
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Resources  |
 Sources |
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Atmosphere
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Frederick Law Olmsted's
Boston Regional Park Plan called for a ring of neighborhood parks, called
the "Green Necklace" pictured here in Brookline, Mass.
Shaping the physical details of our daily experience.
"conventional design is failing because its epistemology is flawed."
"-- lack of integration between them."
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loss of natural capital (biological wealth)
"Ecological design offers three critical stages for addressing this loss: conservation, regeneration and stewardship."
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"Conservation
slows the rate at which things are getting worse."
| Energy source | ||
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Usually nonrenewable | Whenever feasible |
| destructive, relying on fossil fuels or nuclear power; the design consumes natural capital. | renewable:
solar, wind, small-scale hydro, or biomass;
the design lives off solar income
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Marin Solar Village, for 5,000 residents in Novato California is an excellent example of what can be done to capitalize on the availability of solar energy, for heat (solar thermal) and electricity (solar electric, or photovoltaic).
http://www.ecodesign.org/edi/projects/design/marinsolar.html
"Ecological design occurs in the context of specific places. It grows out of a place the way an oak grows out of an acorn….It seeks locally adapted solutions that can replace matter, energy, and waste with design intelligence….matches biological diversity with cultural diversity.
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House: "Carbon dioxide emissions from the manufacture of the cement in its foundations contribute to global warming. The production of electricity…"
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"Ecological design is not a new idea."
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Buildings such as these on barrier islands are precisely part of the problem that costs taxpayers money to place sand back where it once was. That is because sand along the coast and entire barrier islands move. They are designed to shift with the changing levels of the seas. Here is a prime example of altering nature so profoundly to meet a human demand for ocean views that further modifications are needed to dredge sand back on to the beach, which was eroded away by normal littoral drift, bulkheads, wind and waves.
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Examples |
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Solutions
grow from place |
"Water is scarce in Ojai." p. 71 Riverdale, Hudson River Valley, p. 64 Bateson Building, (76-77) Ojai School, (70-72) |
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2 |
Ecological
accounting informs design |
"externalities create a tension between economics and ecology" "The world is rife with externalities from global warming to acid rain", p. 83 |
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3 |
Artificial
wetlands |
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4 |
Everyone
is a designer |
Kwakiutl use of tree in parts
Community design, p. 151 |
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5 |
Make
nature visible |
Real
Goods Trading Company, Hopland, Ca. |
Elements in ecological design.
My suggestions are that we:
The bio-machine or the construction of indoor natural areas to facilitate the production of fresh air and clean water has been called the living machine or biological machine by John Todd and others who at different institutes in Massachusetts, California and Colorado have served to create the architectural and functional standards that allow such concepts to work effectively in reducing the ecological foot print of the buildings to which they are attached. 
