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Ecological Design
Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan present a vision of how the living world and the human world can be rejoined by taking ecology as the basis for design. Ecological design intelligence-effective adaptation to and integration with nature's processes-can be applied at all levels of scale, creating revolutionary forms of buildings, landscapes, cities, and technologies. The authors weave together case studies, personal anecdotes, images, and theory to provide a thorough treatment of the concept of ecological design. In the process, they present and explain a series of design principles that can help build a sustainable world with increased efficiency, fewer toxics, less pollution, and healthier natural systems.
216 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1995
17 people are currently reading
427 people want to read
About the author
Sim Van der Ryn
13 books5 followersSimon Herman Van der Ryn was a Dutch-born American architect, researcher and educator. Van der Ryn's professional interest was applying principles of physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design. He promoted sustainable design at the community scale and the building-specific scale. He designed single-family and multi-family housing, community facilities, retreat centers and resorts, learning facilities, as well as office and commercial buildings.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 16, 2012
What a gem! The authors develop a comprehensive picture and promote deep understanding of environmental crisis as design failure, while exploring revamps of industry, agriculture, infrastructure, and architecture following ecological models of material cycling ("waste equals food"), diversity as resilience, self-direction and adaptability, etc. The book is structured nicely into five principles highlighting what makes a truly restorative, integrated, and robust system.
I haven't done this book justice. It's not to be missed.
I haven't done this book justice. It's not to be missed.
Read
March 22, 2009Great synopsis of ecological design.
August 19, 2023
The five design principles here have greatly informed my design practice, and became the DNA of the International Living Future Institute's Living Building Challenge which is the world's most comprehensive and highest performing green building rating system:
1. Solutions Grow From Place (*)
2. Ecological Accounting Inform Design (rational and too expensive due to lethal capitalism)
3. Design With Nature (*)
4. Everyone Is A Designer (*)
5. Make Nature Visible (*)
* intuitive, flexible and affordable to implement.
Unfortunately, for #2 to be affordable (and thus inclusive and repeatable) we need economic system change that finally values the true cost of fresh air, clean water, healthy food and construction materials, eliminates waste, etc. The unhealthy economic system we have now is capitalism which has always been organized around over-accumulation for the financial elite few, at the expense of our common wealth of health. The political system and public narrative seems to be captured by fossil fuel interests who are pushing humanity and the rest of the living world to extinction in our children's lifetime. No one voted for social and ecological breakdown, and the time left to change the system is urgently small.
Wealthy countries are wealthy directly because poor countries are poor, by global trade design, and global south countries are already suffering extreme inequality from financial system rigged against them as well as being geographically exponentially more vulnerable to the carbon death project known as too much carbon in the atmosphere.
The human heart is capable of great love. The history of social movements tells us that when enough of us act from love, willing to sacrifice and disrupt nonviolently to achieve our demand we have a better chance of succeeding than with any other approach. Only after we begin to fundamentally change the economic system will ecological design principles become common practice.
DECLARE EMERGENCY acts with strict nonviolent discipline to demand that Joe Biden declare a climate emergency and use his emergency powers to do everything possible to stop climate catastrophe in ways that are fair and just. This is the first step to radical and necessary system change that might be the only chance we have to save ourselves. When this happens, ecological design will simply be an integral part of redesigning everything we do so that humans will finally live in respect and reciprocity with nature that provides everything.
Learn more how you can help kick start the future we deserve at the next Introduction to Declare Emergency talk, online, Sunday's at 5pm Eastern Standard. To register, go to our calendar and select the date you can attend, fill out the form and you'll receive the zoom link.
www.DeclareEmergency.org/events
1. Solutions Grow From Place (*)
2. Ecological Accounting Inform Design (rational and too expensive due to lethal capitalism)
3. Design With Nature (*)
4. Everyone Is A Designer (*)
5. Make Nature Visible (*)
* intuitive, flexible and affordable to implement.
Unfortunately, for #2 to be affordable (and thus inclusive and repeatable) we need economic system change that finally values the true cost of fresh air, clean water, healthy food and construction materials, eliminates waste, etc. The unhealthy economic system we have now is capitalism which has always been organized around over-accumulation for the financial elite few, at the expense of our common wealth of health. The political system and public narrative seems to be captured by fossil fuel interests who are pushing humanity and the rest of the living world to extinction in our children's lifetime. No one voted for social and ecological breakdown, and the time left to change the system is urgently small.
Wealthy countries are wealthy directly because poor countries are poor, by global trade design, and global south countries are already suffering extreme inequality from financial system rigged against them as well as being geographically exponentially more vulnerable to the carbon death project known as too much carbon in the atmosphere.
The human heart is capable of great love. The history of social movements tells us that when enough of us act from love, willing to sacrifice and disrupt nonviolently to achieve our demand we have a better chance of succeeding than with any other approach. Only after we begin to fundamentally change the economic system will ecological design principles become common practice.
DECLARE EMERGENCY acts with strict nonviolent discipline to demand that Joe Biden declare a climate emergency and use his emergency powers to do everything possible to stop climate catastrophe in ways that are fair and just. This is the first step to radical and necessary system change that might be the only chance we have to save ourselves. When this happens, ecological design will simply be an integral part of redesigning everything we do so that humans will finally live in respect and reciprocity with nature that provides everything.
Learn more how you can help kick start the future we deserve at the next Introduction to Declare Emergency talk, online, Sunday's at 5pm Eastern Standard. To register, go to our calendar and select the date you can attend, fill out the form and you'll receive the zoom link.
www.DeclareEmergency.org/events
February 2, 2025
The five principles:
1 - Solutions grow from place
"Ecological design begins with the intimate knowledge of a particular place."
2 - Ecological accounting informs design
The case for modern day environmental-impact analysis of projects
3 - Design with nature
Engaging in processes that regenerate rather than deplete, we become more alive. Edit 'ecosystem services' into the design.
4 - Everyone is a designer
"Listen to every voice in the design process". The case for modern day institutions like the BAPE.
5 - Make nature visible
Through living in "nowhere environments" like dumb-designed cities, we learn detachment from nature. "In the span of one century, we've not only destroyed the original landscape, but we've very nearly lost the collective ability to remember what it looked like before.
It is shocking to learn that the sustainability movement was already a thing back in the 1990s, I had no idea. Discourses I thought were novel to my generation actually date back 30 years and more. I never thought I could read this in a book published in 1996:
"A huge literature on sustainability has developed over the past ten years, offering analysis after analysis on the lack of sustainability in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Various underlying causes are invoked, including capitalism, Christianity, colonialism, development, the population explosion, science and technology, and patriarchal culture. These diagnoses are valuable, and all have considerable merit, yet they largely fail to deliver the particulars involved in making the transition to a more sustainable world. Instead, we are left with hopeful, but vague, policy statements."
I guess this is a testament to how much time change takes. I must say it feels somewhat scary and discouraging.
The fifth principle makes me think of another book I'm currently reading, Atomic Habits by James Clear. It reminds me of his first law of habit change: Make it Obvious...
1 - Solutions grow from place
"Ecological design begins with the intimate knowledge of a particular place."
2 - Ecological accounting informs design
The case for modern day environmental-impact analysis of projects
3 - Design with nature
Engaging in processes that regenerate rather than deplete, we become more alive. Edit 'ecosystem services' into the design.
4 - Everyone is a designer
"Listen to every voice in the design process". The case for modern day institutions like the BAPE.
5 - Make nature visible
Through living in "nowhere environments" like dumb-designed cities, we learn detachment from nature. "In the span of one century, we've not only destroyed the original landscape, but we've very nearly lost the collective ability to remember what it looked like before.
It is shocking to learn that the sustainability movement was already a thing back in the 1990s, I had no idea. Discourses I thought were novel to my generation actually date back 30 years and more. I never thought I could read this in a book published in 1996:
"A huge literature on sustainability has developed over the past ten years, offering analysis after analysis on the lack of sustainability in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Various underlying causes are invoked, including capitalism, Christianity, colonialism, development, the population explosion, science and technology, and patriarchal culture. These diagnoses are valuable, and all have considerable merit, yet they largely fail to deliver the particulars involved in making the transition to a more sustainable world. Instead, we are left with hopeful, but vague, policy statements."
I guess this is a testament to how much time change takes. I must say it feels somewhat scary and discouraging.
The fifth principle makes me think of another book I'm currently reading, Atomic Habits by James Clear. It reminds me of his first law of habit change: Make it Obvious...
October 27, 2021
Brilliant & compelling ideas that aren't brought to life as frequently as they should in terms of how we can mitigate the damage we have already done to the planet and our own species.
As opposed to technological sustainability (mindset = tech & market based solutions are the panacea), ecological sustainability rethinks every system in which we depend on nature and interact with the ecosystems that sustain us: agriculture, energy, shelter, infrastructure, transportation, neighborhoods, wilderness, economics, et al. Myopic patterns of industrial design have created a world in which we really fail to work with nature. Thus we must change the underlying assumptions and epistemologies of architecture and design, similar to how we must change the assumptions and epistemologies of agriculture (i.e. from monocultures to permaculture and regenerative ag.)
The section on “Passive Design” explains the intuitive reasoning behind why we should work with nature in the way we design; for the way we design should mimic our coevolution with nature. I loved the example of the Taoist engineers who used their views of the universe as an ontology to design every aspect of life, including their water systems. In Taoism, nature is precious not because it fulfills all human needs, but because it demonstrates the way the Tao works effortlessly in accord with nature. The Taoists designed based on their observations of the flows of water, finding both meaning and nutriment from their active interactions with the landscapes. The Confucianists, on the other hand, viewed the water as an uncontrollable force they needed to control (much like us in the modern age). Their approach towards water system development — as in, mining the soil, degrading wetlands, and exploiting landscapes with their unnatural systems of agriculture — draws stark parallels to the inefficient ways industrial design has built the concrete jungles we live in today. Similar to the Confucianists, our modern trends in design are inefficient for both humans and the planet. The new urban disease, as he writes, is 'econia' - fear of living things.
Last few sentences of the book: "We possess the collective potential to create environments that nurture both the human spirit and the more-than-human living world. The work awaits us."
As opposed to technological sustainability (mindset = tech & market based solutions are the panacea), ecological sustainability rethinks every system in which we depend on nature and interact with the ecosystems that sustain us: agriculture, energy, shelter, infrastructure, transportation, neighborhoods, wilderness, economics, et al. Myopic patterns of industrial design have created a world in which we really fail to work with nature. Thus we must change the underlying assumptions and epistemologies of architecture and design, similar to how we must change the assumptions and epistemologies of agriculture (i.e. from monocultures to permaculture and regenerative ag.)
The section on “Passive Design” explains the intuitive reasoning behind why we should work with nature in the way we design; for the way we design should mimic our coevolution with nature. I loved the example of the Taoist engineers who used their views of the universe as an ontology to design every aspect of life, including their water systems. In Taoism, nature is precious not because it fulfills all human needs, but because it demonstrates the way the Tao works effortlessly in accord with nature. The Taoists designed based on their observations of the flows of water, finding both meaning and nutriment from their active interactions with the landscapes. The Confucianists, on the other hand, viewed the water as an uncontrollable force they needed to control (much like us in the modern age). Their approach towards water system development — as in, mining the soil, degrading wetlands, and exploiting landscapes with their unnatural systems of agriculture — draws stark parallels to the inefficient ways industrial design has built the concrete jungles we live in today. Similar to the Confucianists, our modern trends in design are inefficient for both humans and the planet. The new urban disease, as he writes, is 'econia' - fear of living things.
Last few sentences of the book: "We possess the collective potential to create environments that nurture both the human spirit and the more-than-human living world. The work awaits us."
September 19, 2022
so good!! foundational text do we’ve obviously learned some things since, but really digestible which is important while introducing some really innovative ideas we STILL have yet to implement. and it’s like ??? why aren’t we just doing all of these things all the time? utopia, period. really got me thinking about sustainable design and i had to stop multiple times to sketch out ideas it inspired which is all a boy can ask for rly
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May 22, 2021Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
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February 6, 2025had to speed read this for class, provides a good framework and definitely has some interesting ideas I'd like to revisit
March 23, 2008
What I learned from this book (and my just-completed Sustainable Design class) is how incredibly UNsustainable my actions are. For as much as I think and talk about it, I realized that other than sewing my socks & clothing, having a recycling bin in my house, and switching to better cleaning products, I really am not doing much. Yes, the five principles of this book (1. Solutions Grow from Place, 2. Ecological Accounting Informs Design, 3. Design With Nature, 4. Everyone is a Designer, and 5. Make Nature Visible) are already helping me frame my design projects better, but really the real question is a bigger one. How will I make real changes in my life that will positively impact the environment? Can I dedicate myself to learning more, and to constantly keeping this issue at the front of my mind, in front of all my decisions? How can I spread the word? What gifts do I have that will help me make an impact? One good thing: Ecological/sustainable/green design is so COOL! Had a fun talk with my dad the other day (he hearts George Bush) - and it was awesome to hear his latest thoughts... he agreed that green design really is just smart, healthy, community-oriented design, and that's what he grew up around in Iowa. He doesn't have a problem with it, but is mostly just pissed that the "f-ing liberals" are trying to take it on as a new idea. THAT comment, my friends, was a breakthrough. I am hopeful about the movement.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews