ABSTRACT
Ecological design is the careful meshing of human purposes with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world and the study of those patterns and flows to inform human actions. 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. Ecological design is a healing art by which the readers aim to restore and maintain the wholeness of the entire fabric of life increasingly fragmented by specialization, scientific reductionism, and bureaucratic division. The act of designing ecologically begins with the awareness that the readers can never entirely fathom those connections and with the intent to faithfully honor what they cannot fully comprehend and control. The goal of ecological design is to calibrate human behavior with ecological realities while educating people about ecological possibilities and limits.
