The Ecological Design Process

In which we define our process and get acquainted with the toolkit

Whole Systems Ecological Design, defined

Ecological design requires us to become systems thinkers, and cultivate a designer’s mind. The purpose of today’s class is to open those doors for you.

We have been using the terms “ecological design” and “permaculture” interchangeably, and now we add the terms “whole system(s) design,” to increase your capacity to envision the big picture. They all mean basically the same thing, but the shift in languages tilts the lens, and that can be useful for you.

Ecological design, by definition, is a whole-systems design process

By now you understand that our work is so much more than gardening. If we make it just about gardening we’re missing an opportunity to create a thriving natural system that we can really be a part of. 

You can have an organic garden, a composting toilet, a Hugelkultur, a heap of solar panels, and a goat, and it still won’t be reaching its potential until those components come into relationship with each other, as a whole system. The way to pull it all together is through a process.

Please forgive the very primitive animations…

Whole Systems Design vs Permaculture: are they the same?

Close your eyes and imagine your own “whole system.” It’s easy to let it overwhelm you, to get lost in huge fantasies of what you will do…one day when you win the lottery and buy a huge farm.

Don’t do that.

Be here now, Sister bear! Ok so…. how do we get from fantasy to reality?

Place, Patterns, Process, Principles

The 4 P’s of Permaculture: Place, Patterns, Process, Principles

Consider these ideas a bit further:

Patterns

Zones are patterns.
Sectors are patterns.
Human relationships are patterns.

And so on.

Your whole-system ecological design is just a collection of patterns on paper, a puzzle to represent your best attempt at learning the language of your site and making proposals it can understand. 

It’s not even a metaphor to say that EVERYTHING is a pattern. Even chaos is a pattern. And your design will create patterns, whether you are aware of them or not. 

Take ownership of the fact that every choice you make, every action you take, and a lot of the acts you avoid, are acts of design. 

This is what we mean by cultivating a designer’s mind, and truly, it’s a radical act. If we work, daily, to learn the language of nature, we just might be able to negotiate the survival of our own species.

The fastest way to master the design process is to become aware of the ripple effects of your work. 

Principles

Ok, so you did that module on Ethics and Principles, you made the pretty cards, now what?

The principles are not something you learn and then move on from, nor are they something you check memorize and obsess over. The principles are more essential than either end of that continuum. We don’t USE them in our designs, we INTERACT with them.

Being with the principles is a daily practice, evolving. Plus, anytime you need a way to solve a problem, you will most likely find something in the list to help you.

Did you download this comprehensive list of them yet?

Print it out. Put it in your pocket. Make it into a song. Challenge yourself to use every. single. one. in your design. Can you do it?

​Place

Even if you’ve already got a PDC and you’re doing a social systems design as your main project, that project will still occur in a place, and that place–where you meet, where you do social stuff, where you live and eat and work, will influence and be influenced by your project. 

This is especially if you’re starting with your own home system: design starts where you are now.

Speaking of which…

It’s time to choose your site for your student design project.

​But first: the Ugly Mug Analogy.

Before you choose the site you will use for this course, take a moment to imagine you’re in a ceramics course. You’ve never done ceramics before. You show up every day for the whole 72 class-hours of the course, and at the end of the first semester, you have a shelf filled with lopsided yet precious objects–the fruits of your hard work and scramble up the learning curve.

Years later, after a bunch more classes, and after practicing on your own for many hours, you look back at those lumpy ashtrays with the fondness of a mother, and also with the awareness that they represent but the tiniest tip of your potentialThat’s exactly what this design is: a clunky yet precious experiment that you should give your very best effort to, while still giving yourself plenty of heart-space to revel in, as a beginner. You’re here to practice. Mastery comes later.

That’s exactly what this design is: a clunky yet precious experiment that you should give your very best effort to, while still giving yourself plenty of heart-space to revel in, as a beginner. You’re here to practice. Mastery comes later.

As such, there is no need to fret about which site to choose. If you’re a renter, just use the place you live right now. If you’re a nomad, use the house you land at most often. If you’re an inner-city apartment dweller, go out right now and find the nearest community garden, and do the work to connect it, somehow, to your home system.

We have only two requirements for the site you select:

  • It needs to be a real place, that you can gain access to, for observation and documentation purposes at the very least.
  • You need to be willing and able to talk to the people connected to the place. This includes land owners, tenants, neighbors, and any other existing humans who occupy the space or an edge of it. (If you don’t feel safe talking to the people who currently occupy the site, please choose a different one, at least for now.)​
  • When in doubt, do your house. It is almost always the best choice for this course, even if you don’t see yourself living there for long or actually implementing the design. You can do more designs, later.

This video was created for a different course, but it fits really well here and will probably help, so check it out:

How to select a site for your permaculture project

Our Design Process: GOBRADIME

​Ok so what exactly is our design process and how does it work, in real time?

To help you create your project, the rest of the classes in this Design Studio will walk you through the GOBRADIME design process. GOBRADIME, and variations of it, can be used for many different types of designs. I wrote about it in my book, Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and your Neighborhood into a Community, and if you’re not familiar with it, please take a moment to read this quick introduction.

Throughout this process, please feel free to skip around! It is basically impossible to create a perfect process that works for everyone, and the nature of a course of education begs a somewhat linear process. However, one of the benefits of online education is that you can revisit classes, skip ahead, and circle back as much as serves your individual needs. 

That being said, this particular process works well for a wide variety of projects, so here we go:

GOBRADIME Permaculture Design Process, explained

here’s a pdf you can study as well

​Components of your design

The ethics, principles, processes, and visions behind your design are important, but when it coems down to it you will be spending a lot of time on placement. In a very literal sense, landscape design is all about moving stuff around. We call that stuff “components,” and one of the first things you’re gonna do for your design project is to brainstorm a list of as many components as you can possibly think of that you might like to include in your design.

As you brainstorm, consider that each component is, in itself, a strategy for solving problems and producing a yield, and the relationships between them are, when interconnected, your whole system design.

​Design components wish list

Sometimes people have a lot of attachment to particular components in a potential design. You might find it impossible to envision your site without a pond, a solar bathhouse, a big greenhouse, and a hügelkultur. Ok, great. So how are those components solving problems? And how will they interconnect?

It is important that you analyze and evaluate each component you consider for a design, regardless of whether you just “love big greenhouses” or not. We’ll get into the layers of analysis later, but for now, begin to see your site and your design as a system of components, and see the principles as tools for knitting that system together.

So, make your wishlist, and have get super creative with it. Make art, make checklists, make word clouds, push your brain in different directions…and dream.

Sidenote: on the difference between a “component” and an “element”

A lot of designers use the word “elements” to describe the components of their design, and I have done so myself, often. But it’s actually a pretty important distinction, and the more precisely we can communicate about our work, the more effective it will be.

Elements (water, earth, fire, air, etc) are design considerations. They are flows, energies, and patterns we can harness, work around, or disrupt.

Components are things that we build, move, and design into our site. Components are strategies. There is some crossover between elements and components, yes, but as a designer, you need to consider both categories, and not lump them into one. 

​With 40+ women on this teaching team, we work to synchronize our language, and to agree on a lexicon that would be clear and consistent for students. Still there is a fair amount of variation in terms we used, partially because of our individual lineage as teachers, and also because of our cultural diversity. So, forgive us if we misspeak in some of the videos and say “elements” in spots where we should have said “components”!

That being said, do be precise in your language as a designer. The more clearly you can communicate your ideas, the more support you will get for implementation. 

Time is a Sector

In this series, faculty member Kim Deans explores time management through a designer’s mindset, and helps you think about how your relationship with time influences your designs.

Video 1 Time management concepts
Video 2 Nature as our inspiration for managing time
Video 3 Permaculture principles and time management

Homework for this phase of your design project

IMPORTANT:

At the end of each of the topical modules, there are sections called “homework,” and as you know (hopefully by now), while we encourage you to make a reasonable attempt at trying at least some of the suggestions in each of those sections, we don’t make any of it absolutely mandatory, because you will need to choose what experiences to pursue, based on your own site and situation.

However, here in the Design Studio, you should consider ALL of the homework to be required, as you will need to answer these questions, produce these deliverables, and participate in these feedback loops, in order to successfully complete your design project.

Ready to get to work?

Paradise Design Game

Step 1:

Make a list of every component you think you might want to include in your whole systems design. Components are the physical things that appear in your design. 

  • Vegetable garden?
  • Orchards?
  • Food forest?
  • Solar hot tub?
  • Wind power?
  • Workshop?
  • Chickens?
  • What else?

Whatever you want, make a list, and go CRAZY with ideas!

Step 2:

For each item on your list, note which of the other components this item could somehow connect to.

  • Does your shower connect to your garden?
  • How so?
  • Does your kitchen connect to your chicken coop?
  • Where?
  • And so on.
  • Imagine all of the components working together as a whole system design.
  • What does that look/feel/smell/sound/taste like?

Step 3:

Play with drawing it out. Don’t worry about drawing maps to scale or getting all the details! Think of it more like a game, and make a drawing of your silly ultimate fantasy whole system design. ​ Have fun with it and don’t get too serious about the details, yet.

Have fun, and give yourself permission to believe that anything is possible. We’ll get practical, soon enough.

Feedback

Each step in the design process includes some kind of feedback.

For this step, collect it from somebody in a mentorship role:

Your feedback assignment for this section is to get in touch with somebody who already has a Permaculture Design Certificate and at least two years of experience, and bounce your ideas around together. You can find this person in our forums or in your own community.

If you are working a faculty mentor in our program, she would be a the one to contact!

Otherwise, you will need to go out into the world and find somebody who is qualified to give you feedback. You may need to arrange payment or a work-trade. Negotiating this relationship is part of your training, and this person will be asked to fill out a feedback form on your behalf, later.

Deliverables

These are the tangible pieces of your design project to have in hand before moving on to the next step.

  • Site selection. Choose your site and make note of the geolocation. Copy a map from Google Earth, so you have something to scribble on.
  • Compile your list of components, starting with what you created in the Paradise Design Game, and taking it a step toward realistic. Go down the list and rate each item on a scale of 1 to 5; 1 means you MUST have that component in your design, 5 means you’d like to maybe add it, if resources permit. Then, in a hierarchy by how bad you want/need it. Now that you’re getting serious, go ahead and cross off “unicorn stables,” and work toward a realistic, prioritized list.
  • Also include your paradise fantasy design! You’ll enjoy seeing it again later, and it might remind you of an idea you had early on, that would have been forgotten otherwise.
  • If you haven’t yet, start working on your base map. Refer back to this article for more about the base map.

Psst! check out these problem-solving tools