Philosophy

ECOLOGICAL DESIGN

Ecological Design is the “Meta-Discipline” that brings together all design disciplines. Eco Design proposes that we merge  our design technology with nature’s basic operating principles. Most design technologies were developed during a time when we took the fruits of nature’s 4 billion years evolutionary design for granted, and seldom integrated them into modern designs for the built environment.The diagram suggests that Ecological Design  must connect and merge what we understand about how nature works with our own theories of design and technology, creating whole new solutions.

One example is “biomimicry” the direct adaptation of nature’s solutions to our current needs, whether they be the use of long used herbal and plant remedies rather than synthetic chemicals for treating illness, adapting the chemical strength of a spider’s web to modern tensile structures, or mimicking the fractal structures of nature in urban design.

* The basic principles of Ecological Design are found in the book by that name by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan.