Ecological Design - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 354

designed to discharge no waste. The economy of that world would be calibrated to fit
ecological realities. Taxes would be levied on things we do not want such as pollution and
removed from things such as income and employment that we do want. These changes
signal a revolution in design that draws on fields as diverse as ecology, systems dynamics,
energetics, sustainable agriculture, industrial ecology, architecture, and landscape
architecture.*
The challenge of ecological design is more than simply an engineering problem of
improving efficiency—reducing the rates at which we poison ourselves and damage the
world. The revolution that van der Ryn and Cowan propose must first reduce the rate
at which things get worse (coefficients of change) but eventually change the structure
of the larger system. As Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart argue, we will need a
“second industrial revolution” that eliminates the very concept of waste. 7 This implies, in
their words, putting “filters on our minds, not at the end of pipes.” In practice, the change
McDonough proposes implies, among other things, changing manufacturing systems
to eliminate the use of toxic and cancer-causing materials and developing closed loop
systems that deliver “products of service,” not products that are eventually discarded to
air, water, and landfills. The pioneers in ecological design begin with the observation that
nature has been developing successful strategies for living on Earth for 3.8 billion years
and is, accordingly, a model for
Farms that work like forests and prairies
Buildings that accrue natural capital like trees
Wastewater systems that work like natural wetlands
Materials that mimic the ingenuity of plants and animals
Industries that work more like ecosystems
Products that become part of cycles resembling natural material flow
Wes Jackson, for example, is attempting to redesign agriculture in the Great Plains to
mimic the prairie that once existed there. 8 Paul Hawken proposes to remake commerce
in the image of natural systems. 9 The new field of industrial ecology is similarly
attempting to redesign manufacturing to reflect the way ecosystems work. The new
field of “biomimicry” is beginning to transform industrial chemistry, medicine, and
communications. Common spiders, for example, make silk that is ounce for ounce five
times stronger than steel with no waste byproducts. The inner shell of an abalone is
far tougher than our best ceramics. 10 By such standards, human industry is remarkably
clumsy, inefficient, and destructive. Running through each of these is the belief that the
successful design strategies, tested over the course of evolution, provide the standard to
inform the design of commerce and the large systems that supply us with food, energy,
water, and materials, and remove our wastes. 11
The greatest impediment to an ecological design revolution is not, however, technological
or scientific, but rather human. If intention is the first signal of design, as Bill McDonough
* The roots of ecological design can be traced back to the work of Scottish biologist, D'Arcy Thompson and his
magisterial On Growth and Form first published in 1917. In contrast to Darwin's evolutionary biology, Thompson
traced the evolution of life forms back to the problems elementary physical forces such as gravity pose for
individual species. His legacy is an evolving science of forms evident in evolutionary biology, biomechanics,
and architecture. Ecological design is evident in the work of Bill Browning, Herman Daly, Paul Hawken, Wes
Jackson, Aldo Leopold, Amory and Hunter Lovins, John Lyle, Bill McDonough, Donella Meadows, Eugene
Odum, Sim van der Ryn, and David Wann.