Ecological Design

Green Infrastructure for Asian Cities: The Spatial Concepts and Planning Strategies

by Sadahisa Kato

Peer-reviewed paper
Kato, S. 2011. Green Infrastructure for Asian Cities: The Spatial Concepts and Planning Strategies. Journal of the 2011 International Symposium on City Planning: 161-170. Korea Planners Association.

Reviewed the concept of green infrastructure (GI) and five cases of GI-like application in Japan; proposed four... more Reviewed the concept of green infrastructure (GI) and five cases of GI-like application in Japan; proposed four general landscape planning and design guidelines of GI from a landscape ecology perspective; and made recommendations of four areas of application of GI to Asian cities

The closed world of ecological architecture

by Peder Anker

The semantic level in HMS design (ECCE-2010 Delf)

by Michael May

Michael May: The Semantic Level in HMS Design:Constraints, Scale Types and Representational Forms. Paper presented at the 28th Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, August 25 - 27, 2010, Delft University.
Proceedings published by ACM.

Beyond affordances - Why direct perception is not enough (CEPHAD 2010)

by Michael May

Michael May: Beyond affordances - Why direct perception is not enough. Position paper for the CEPHAD January 2010 conference "The borderland between philosophy and design research". Centre for Philosophy & Design, Copenhagen.
http://www.dkds.dk/Forskning/Projekter/CEPHAD/events/Cephad2010

Dimensions of Representation Design (IDSS-2005 Draft, Sienna Workshop)

by Michael May

Johannes Petersen & Michael May: Dimensions of Representation Design.
Draft paper for International Workshop on Intelligent Decision Support Systems: Retrospects and prospects, August 29 - September 2, 2005, Certosa di Pontignano (Siena). Unpublished.

Technonatures Introduction White Wilbert

by Damian White

An attempt to survey and think through the political implications of hybridity discourses such as Latour and Haraway for environmental politics. This is the introductory chapter from D.White and C.Wilbert (Eds) Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-first CenturyISBN13: 978-1-55458-150-4, 2009.

Lots of other really interesting cuts in the book from Erik Swyngedouw, Sarah Whatmore, Mike Michael, Steve Hinchliffe and others ...check it out at Available from http://www.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/white-wilbert.shtml

Damian White A Green Industrial Revolution Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age

by Damian White

Sympathetic critique of Natural Capitalism and Factor Four literatures......some initial attempts to formulate questions that a critical sociology of design should be asking......

Lister, N-M. (2010). “Insurgent Ecologies: (Re) Claiming Ground in Landscape and Urbanism” In: M. Mostafavi with G. Doherty (eds.), Ecological Urbanism. Lars Müller Publishers, pp. 524-535.

by Nina-Marie Lister

From the book:

With the aim of projecting alternative and sustainable forms of urbanism, the book asks:... more From the book:

With the aim of projecting alternative and sustainable forms of urbanism, the book asks: What are the key principles of an ecological urbanism? How might they be organized? And what role might design and planning play in the process?

While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed. The premise of the book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities. Ecological urbanism approaches the city without any one set of instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary approach. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment.

The book brings together design practitioners and theorists, economists, engineers, artists, policy makers, environmental scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of reaching a more robust understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future.

Contributors include:
Homi Bhabha, Stefano Boeri, Chuck Hoberman, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Bruno Latour, Nina-Marie Lister, Moshen Mostafavi, Matthias Schuler, Sissel Tolaas, Charles Waldheim.

Integral Sustainable Design: transformative perspectives

by Mark DeKay

New book. Available from Amazon, Earthscan, or Routledge web sites

This book offers practical and theoretical tools for more effective sustainable design solutions and for communicating... more This book offers practical and theoretical tools for more effective sustainable design solutions and for communicating sustainable design ideas to today's diverse stakeholders.

It uses integral theory to make sense of the many competing ideas in this area and offers a powerful conceptual framework for sustainable designers through the four main perspectives of: behaviours; systems; experiences; cultures.

It also uses human developmental theory to reframe sustainable design across four levels of complexity present in society: the Traditional, Modern, Postmodern, and Integral waves. Profuse with illustrations and examples, the book offers many conceptual tools including:

• twelve principles of integral sustainable design
• sixteen prospects of sustainable design
• six perceptual shifts for ecological design thinking
• five levels of sustainable design aesthetics
• ten injunctions for designing connections to nature.

Guide to Sustainable Thermal Comfort.

by Fabiola Marin-Salgado

Ilter, D., Ilter, A. T. (2011) “An Overview of Green Building Practice in Turkey”, Management and Innovation for a Sustainable Built Environment – CIB International Conference, Amsterdam.

by DENIZ ARTAN ILTER

Interconnections, Relationships, and Environmental Wholes: A Phenomenological Ecology of Natural and Built Worlds

by David Seamon

Originally published as a chapter in Melissa Geib (ed.), Phenomenology and Ecology (pp. 53-86). Pittsburgh: Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, 2006.

Ecology, both as a science and as a world view, emphasizes the study of relationships, interconnections, and... more Ecology, both as a science and as a world view, emphasizes the study of relationships, interconnections, and environmental wholes that are different from the sum of their environmental parts. “Special qualities emerge out of interactions and collectivities,” writes intellectual historian Donald Worster (1994, p. 22), in his Nature’s Economy, a history of ecological ideas.

The central question I ask here is this: What do the relationships, interconnections, and environmental wholes of ecology become in a phenomenological perspective? To examine this question, I consider one phenomenon from the natural world—color—and one phenomenon from the humanmade world—lively urban places.

To discuss a phenomenology of lively urban places, I turn to my own work on the bodily dimensions of environmental experience and action and also emphasize, after architectural theorist Bill Hillier (1989, 1996; Hillier and Hanson 1984), that the physical structure of place, particularly the spatial configuration of pathways, plays a major role in establishing whether streets are well used and animated or empty and lifeless.

To discuss a phenomenology of color, I turn to the remarkable proto-phenomenology of German dramatist and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who—more than a hundred years before Husserl formally laid out the phenomenological enterprise—devised a qualitative way of seeing and understanding that can rightly be called a phenomenology of the natural world.

Systems Oriented Design and Sustainability

by Birger Sevaldson

Authors are Birger Sevaldson, Michael Hensel and Björn Frostell.
The paper was presented at the LeNS conference  SUSTAINABILITY IN DESIGN: NOW! Bangalore 2010.
The link points to the proceedings, the paper is found on pages 465-474

This paper introduces a new perspective on systems thinking in design related to questions of sustainability. We argue... more This paper introduces a new perspective on systems thinking in design related to questions of sustainability. We argue that designers need to look at sustainability in an integrated manner where technical, economical and social aspects are embedded in an ecological holistic view. Sustainability is not just another requirement in the design process but needs to form the foundation for all design work.

Systems Oriented Design is a new concept which is currently being researched and developed by the lead-author. It draws on existing concepts of systems approaches especially Soft Systems Methodologies and Critical Systems Thinking and contributes by developing design proprietary methods, techniques and skills. By defining systems thinking as a design practice with its own particular set of methods and skills the ap-proach becomes closely linked to a designerly way of thinking and making. The main aim of this approach is to involve deeper in all aspects of a design project. In this way the designer can be enabled to address a much greater complexity, to assimilate very large amounts of information and to produce new innovative interventions. 
We argue that these are requirements and skills needed for the designer to address sustainability in a holistic way.