Introduction
Environmental design is a term referring to the process of addressing complex environmental issues when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products. Classical prudent design may have always considered environmental factors; however, discussion in schools of Architecture and Urban / Regional Planning beginning in the1940s by Serge Chermayeff [1] have made the concept more explicit. It has also become a collective term for contributing professions of design and planning (architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, urban planning, regional planning, product design, interior design, et al.) taken as an interrelated whole. Variant definitions may be found of the writings of Neutra [2] or Doxiadis [3]. Since the environmental movements from the 1960s to the present, the term has become expanded to apply to ecological and sustainability issues. [4]
[1] Richard Plunz (ed.), Design and the Public Good : Selected Writings by Serge Chermayeff 1930 -1980, MIT 1982. “I first applied the term Environmental Design to a course of study at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the forties. Soon after Dean William Wurster adopted the same broad definition to his new school in Berkeley….” (p.201). In 1953 Chermayeff brought this Environmental Design curriculum to Harvard (chart, p.200).
[2] Richard Neutra, The Mystery and Realities of the Site, Norton 1951: ‘It is fertile, it is quite “useful” and “practical,” to pause and assume a truly realistic attitude toward the base of all environmental design, the natural setting and site.’ (p.15) See also, Richard Neutra, Survival Through Design, Oxford 1954.
[3] Constantinos Doxiadis, Ekistics: An Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements, Hutchinson 1968.
[4] This recent literature is too vast to cite. See for example “environmental history” for a booklist.
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Examples
Examples of the environmental design process include use of roadway noise computer models in design of noise barriers and use of roadway air dispersion models in analyzing and designing urban highways. Designers consciously working within this more recent framework of philosophy and practice seek a blending of nature and technology, regarding ecology as the basis for design. Some believe that strategies of conservation, stewardship, and regeneration can be applied at all levels of scale from the individual building to the community, with benefit to the human individual and local and planetary ecosystems.
Specific examples of large scale environmental design projects include:
- Boston Transportation Planning Review
- BART|Bay Area Rapid Transit System Daly City Turnback project and airport extension.
- Metropolitan Portland, Oregon light rail system
History
Early roots began in the late 19th Century with writer/designer William Morris, who rejected the use of industrialized materials and processes in wallpaper, fabrics and books his studio produced. He and others, such as John Ruskin felt that the industrial revolution would lead to harm done to nature and workers.
The narrative of Phil Cousineau's documentary film Ecological Design: Inventing the Future asserts that in the decades after World War II, "The world was forced to confront the dark shadow of science and industry." From the middle of the twentieth century, thinkers like Buckminster Fuller have acted as catalysts for a broadening and deepening of the concerns of environmental designers. Nowadays, energy efficiency, appropriate technology, organic horticulture or organic agriculture, land restoration, community design, and ecologically sustainable energy and waste systems are recognized considerations or options and may each find application.
See also
References
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