Plants and Healers

Design

“Design is the underlying matrix of life” Victor Papanek

“Design is the keyword of this book: design in landscape, social, and conceptual systems; and design in space and time….”
- Bill Mollison

The professional designer came into prominence as the humanizer of engineered products at the beginning of the 20th century to serve the needs of industry. Generally, I felt from my teachers who had been/are professional designers that through their careers they did not have much of an awareness of the impact of design on the environment. Design was more seen as an aspect of creativity as well as serving their client’s needs. With the increasing environmental awareness each of them became tuned in and began to shift. They all felt that there is an awakening within the design world as to the ethics of design. And in this awakening new principles have been developed to represent novel approaches to design. Though one of our teachers, Ezio Manzini pointed out, “Now designers are grasping the problem but visions are limited.”
One of the gifts from this class is this notion of conscious design and a recognition that we are all designers, indeed, that we are all designs. I have come up with the slogan “You Design You” to remind myself of that. Design is us and passes through us into larger designs. If there is a grand, intergalactic design, I am sure it is not a static, linear design but a dynamic, whole design. From this MSc program I am more aware in a very real way of the presence of the design of Gaia within whom we live. This is an animate, adaptable, responsive being who encourages by example.
Our teacher, Alastair Fuad-Luke, (in Chapman) diagramed many of the ways these new approaches to design have been described with their different titles: Ecological Design (Eco-design), Co-design, participatory design, slow design, green design…and, of course, the title of this course,

Sustainable Design

Sustainable—to be able to sustain. This word came into vogue in the 1990’s. The word sustain comes from Latin sustenere ‘to hold up’. In one online dictionary there were nine active definitions containing words such as: keep in existence, encourage, maintain, supply with necessities, support the spirits, vitality, or resolution of. David Holmgren points out in his book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, ”The lack of any reasonable definition of sustainability has left it open to inevitable appropriation by the corporate spin doctors. But even the most genuine and useful sustainability concepts including permaculture contain ambiguity about sustainability as a state or process.”
Michael Braungart, co-author of Cradle to Cradle, spoke about how “being sustainable is boring” and emphasized, “Sustainability is just the minimum”. He asked, “Do you want to just sustain your relationship with your spouse?” He challenged a lot of buzzwords like efficiency and carbon footprint reminding us to aspire for beauty and “to celebrate human life”.
We need, also, to pursue the definitions of other, perhaps more appropriate terms, like ecological design, which John and Nancy Todd defined in 1984 as “design for human settlements that incorporates principles inherent in the natural world in order to sustain human populations over a long span of time. This design adapts the wisdom and strategies of the natural world to human problems.” In the book, Ecological Design (1996) they define it as “any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes”. Though these definitions are far more inclusive than mainstream standards of design, they do not explicitly include the participation of the stakeholders in the design central to Alastair’s co-design concepts nor the socially innovative design concepts that encourage human evolution as shared by Ezio. Neither does it state the inter-dependant, co-evolving aspects of Nature (and our being a part of Nature). Why not participatory design? Or, as Alastair would like us to consider, co-design or slow design? Each term has its strengths and limitations but as David Orr writes we need a paradigm shift, “Our institutions and organizations still reflect their origins in a different time…. If we are to build a better world…we must transcend the disorder and fragmentation of the industrial age…. By whatever name, that philosophy must connect us to life, to each other and to generations to come.” (pg 4)
So, yes, we are left with that challenge of uncertainty and ambiguity. As we often hear in the MSc program, we live at the edge of chaos. Focusing on this has led me to a strong conviction that now is the time to act. Personally we need to acquire earthskills and develop ourselves enough to know our part in the unfolding wonders of creation. Collectively we need to begin preparing an energy descent plan (Hopkins) to address Holmgren’s challenge: “The real issue of our age is how we make a graceful and ethical descent”. If we acknowledge what Manzini calls, “the ongoing big change.” then it is time to act and do and network!
Holmgren goes on “Once we accept the reality and magnitude of energy descent, we begin to ask what ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable systems’ or ‘sustainable system design’ might mean. Even the idea of permanence at the heart of permaculture is problematic to say the least.”
As James Lovelock calls out from his “cave in the mountains”,

Adapt or Perish!

During my time at this temple of the mind, I have come to see that really there is nothing new under the sun. It has all been written. The answers lie within the dusty tombs we call books. Is there anyone left who can read? We must open the gates of the ivory towers and leave the shopping malls to unlock the wisdom of our elders. If we can do that, we will see that there is an articulated philosophy is perfect for the context of our new world rising and it is called….

Permaculture

“The permaculture movement is part of this global cultural reality, which some call post-modernism, where all meaning is relative and contingent.” Holmgren

The permaculture movement has spread remarkably in 35 years. It has from two people, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia in the 1970’s to over 100,000 trained PC designers in most countries of the world. I have walked in PC gardens at the edge of the Kalahari in Africa, the southern island of NZ, the Andes of Peru...to name a few…and certainly here at Schumacher College the explosion of permaculture under the stewardship of Justin West is in full swing. Justin has learned much from our neighbor, the world-renowned Martin Crawford of Agro-forestry fame, growing edible forests. These lands have certainly benefited from their attention. But we are just beginning…
Along with this growth of permaculture has come a splintering of ideas of what permaculture really is. There is an international permaculture conference held roughly every couple of years which has done its best to keep endorsing a true strength of permaculture in its ability to embrace any land wisdom principles that contribute to a greater effectiveness. “Traditions are the building blocks of the new.” (Manzini lecture) And at the same time, if some edges are not established then permaculture’s meaning becomes diluted in an ocean of amorphous possibility. As David Holmgren points out, “…there are dangers in attempts to develop ‘a theory of everything’…. Nevertheless, I see the progressive evolution of permaculture as a strength in influencing the patchy and pulsing nature of social change.”
These many meanings are not necessarily wrong and many can simultaneously exist. The concern though is that one aspect of permaculture, such as market gardens, should not dominate broader meanings or that the term permaculture not be used in green washing. There is an ongoing effort to ensure that those who teach PC or call themselves PC designers have a common foundation from which they operate.
It was quickly realized that permaculture reached beyond its initial meaning of permanent agriculture—to become permanent culture. For as Holmgren writes, “People, their buildings and the ways they organize themselves are central to permaculture.”
Permaculture design is not trying to be everything. It has grown from the emphasis on food to include design of physical and social structures for sustainable living. I have come across little evidence that people are trying to encompass PC into specific products like a PC fork or PC frying pan.
When permaculture design becomes the underlying approach to creating a sustainable community, its basic tenants will implicitly affect individual product design; they will rise up out of the fertile forest (literally and figuratively) that this approach will provide.
”Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new. It arranges what was always there in a different way so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes. What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total commonsense design for human communities is revolutionary!” (Mollison, pg 9)

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” -Shakespeare

So what is permaculture?

Mollison writes “Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.” (pg. ix)
“The Prime Directive of Permaculture: The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children. Make it now.” (pg 1)
“The ethical basis of Permaculture: 1) Care of the Earth 2) Care of People 3) Setting limits to population and consumption.” (pg 2)

Holmgren writes “Permaculture emphasizes bottom-up ‘redesign’ processes, starting with the individual and household as the drivers for change at the market, community and cultural level. Permaculture sees pre-industrial sustainable societies as providing models that reflect the more general system design principles observable in nature, and relevant to post-industrial systems.” (pg xvii)

I have a philosopher/farmer/Goethean Scientist friend of mine named Turtle who has come up with his,

Philosophy of Duh

Permaculture is a 30 year old word for a 10,000 year old idea…there isn't specifically anything new about what the principles of PC are, it's just that today we talk about them as an idea or a specific system. I think what I am doing with my little jive talk is trying to get people to see that we all practice PC in some ways, and we always have. I want to make more people more comfortable with the idea, more at ease with a concept that is accompanied with an intimidating 3-inch-thick designers handbook.
Permaculture is the Science of Duh. I need water to nourish the crops and wash my face. Water falls from the sky and then off of my roof through downspouts. I think I'll put a bucket under the spout. Duh!!!
The best ideas in PC are the most basic concepts of working with nature...I think that that is what makes it so attractive, so beautiful. So the practice of, the art of or the science of duh, whatever you want to call it, is the practice of doing that which you would be an idiot if you didn't. It is common sense…

Unfortunately, as Justin points out to people who frequently ask about the transition Schumacher College is going through, “common sense isn’t so common anymore.” Indeed, what are we teaching our children? I have heard it claimed that modern humans are the least skilled in what was once thought of as basic human abilities such as making fire, gathering food and medicine, finding potable water, constructing shelter and clothing, even knowing the cardinal directions. How did this come to be? As a strange irony that comes with this label of being a modern human, we think of ourselves as the most evolved beings riding this wave of progress. As another of our teachers, Terry Irwin, pointed out, “We cannot perceive what we cannot conceive. We are blinded by our conditioning…. We need to improve the power of our thinking.”

PC as SD

Sustainable design, with all its ambiguity, lies at the heart of permaculture. Sustainability, yes, but not stopping at self-sustainability, onward to co-sustainability. From the self we grow to appreciate our inter-dependability and see our work as leaves on the tree of life. We play our small parts and can feel how they interlink with all of life in each unique moment.
One of the beauties of permaculture is that it can encourage a cerebral expansion of the mind with big picture, on-top-of-the-mountain thinking. As you follow each thought, it takes you back down to the earth into intricate details of its manifestation. For example, you can think about the zones around a homestead (PC describes five of them). The closest is the home. In the home is a bathroom and in the bathroom a toilet. PC people all over the world have experimented with toilet designs. You can read about them and take your pick based on your needs. And these designs take into consideration all the other aspects of the house and the zones out from there.
How does this ripple through the world network that is PC? There are magazines and websites and chat groups. There are associations and gatherings. But most importantly, there are thousands of “seeds of innovation” [Manzini lecture] who are each carrying out an experiment of sustainable living. Manzini adds, “Seeds are real, not utopian fantasies.” Their designs are shaped by the new stories that rain down, carried by the descendents of Kokopelli along with the seeds and music.
As Brian Goodwin often says “We are here to serve each other and to serve the earth.” As one of my PC teachers said, “Your first client is always the earth.” Mollison reminds us, “…the end result of the adoption of permaculture strategies in any country or region will be to dramatically reduce the area of the agricultural environment needed by the households and the settlements of people, and to release much of the landscape for the sole use of wildlife and for the re-occupation by endemic flora. Respect for all life forms is a basic, and in fact essential, ethic for all people.”
As David Holmgren pointed out, looking into the definitions of words soon becomes problematic as we try to have them explain the complexities of life. What this has taught me is to hold words more lightly. As Satish Kumar discussed in our fireside chat, “Don’t have fixed opinions. Don’t be dogmatic. Be free in your thinking.” When encountering words I ask what are the intentions, contexts, and meanings behind them? What is being communicated?
In the sustainable design course, though permaculture was alluded to a couple of times, it was clear that PC has not been embraced by designers as a model of sustainability. This is based, I feel, on ignorance and classism. And, as Mollison discusses, the resistance by academia to embrace multi-disciplinary approaches. From my perspective, critiques of PC not being academically rigorous enough is more a sign of academic rigor mortus. For as we have seen in this essay, PC is clearly SD. Through this dynamic philosophy we can finally unify the heart, mind, and hand. Orr writes, “When we get it right, that larger, ecologically informed enlightenment will upset comfortable philosophies that underlie the modern world in the same way that the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century upset medieval hierarchies of church and monarchy.” (pg 4) And that is what Permaculture is doing.

References

Articles

Bortoft, Henri “Counterfeit and Authentic Wholes: Finding a
means for dwelling in Nature.” Marinus Nighoff Publishers 1985

Books

Birkeland, Janis (2002) Design for Sustainability Earthscan

Chapman, Jonathan and Grant, Nick (2007) Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories Earthscan

Edwards, Andres (2005) The Sustainability Revolution New Society Publishers

Harding, Stephan(2006) Animate Earth Chelsea Green

Holmgren, David (2003) Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability Holmgren Design Services

Hopkins, Rob (2008) The Transition Handbook Green Books

McDonough, William and Braungart, Michael (2002) Cradle to Cradle North Point Press

Mollison, Bill (1996) Permaculture: A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future Tagari Publications

Orr, David (2002) The Nature of Design Oxford Press

Todd, Nancy and Todd, John (1984) Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology as the basis of Design Sierra Club Books

Van Der Ryn, Sim and Cowan, Stuart (1996) Ecological Design Island Press

Websites

Permaculture Activist Magazine:
www.permacultureactivist.net

Permaculture Magazine:
www.permaculture.org.uk