Ecological Design as a Large Concept

In 2005 the winner of the award was Daniel Wahl, who was studying for a PhD in Natural Design at the Centre for the Study of Natural Design, Duncan of Jordanstone College, University of Dundee. The title of his submission was: ‘Study visit to the Adam Joseph Lewis Centre at Oberlin College and interview with Prof. David W. Orr’.

Study Visit to the Adam Joseph Lewis Centre at Oberlin College
and interview with Prof. David W. Orr

"Beginning in 1995 I organized an effort with students, faculty and members of the public to design and build an environmental studies centre at Oberlin College. Students met in thirteen planning sessions and thereafter with a group of architects and designers to develop the concepts finally embodied in Adam Joseph Lewis Centre. ... The result is a building and landscape that has become a laboratory; the study of ecologically engineered solutions for waste water, solar energy, ecological restoration, ecological design, data gathering analysis and display, landscape management and horticulture, and the art of communicating these things to the wider public. ". The Lewis Centre, in turn was instrumental in catalysing the formation of the Cleveland Green Building Coalition, a seventy-five acre community supported farm [and] a $13 million building project in downtown Oberlin organized by three recent graduates. … The Lewis Centre was also instrumental in encouraging college trustees to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy for the college that includes the goal of becoming climatically neutral. In other words, the building was a means to the larger ends of improving ecological competence and ecological design skills, and initiating real changes,"

Clearly, the Lewis Centre at Oberlin provides a touchstone example of how integrated ecological design projects that are linked to higher educational institutions can serve as catalysts for important local and regional change towards sustainability. David Orr was among the first environmental educators to emphasize the crucial role active participation of informed citizens in the process of creating a more sustainable society. He identified the increase of ecological design competence and ecological literacy at community level as a central facilitator of cultural transformation towards more sustainable practices (see Orr, 1992). Orr’s greatly expanded vision of ecological design as "a large concept that joins science and the practical arts with ethics, politics, and economics“ (Orr, 2002, p4) corresponds well with the ecologically literate and salutogenic design approach to whole and integrated systems that researchers at the University of Dundee are developing (see Baxter, 2005 and Wahl, 2005). A bold vision for the future of the Centre for the Study of Natural Design, potentially in collaboration with Scottish Centres, would be to emulate the example provided by the creation of the Lewis Centre and create a similar touchstone project of integrated ecological design and ecoliteracy education in Scotland.

o Create a photographic and video record of the different ecological design features of Centre (Including its: renewable energy systems, passive solar design, grey-water-cycles collection, Living Machine waste water treatment plant, sustainable building materials and landscaping and the building’s use in design and ecoliteracy education).

o Visit to the Cleveland Green Building Coalition and its community supported farm and building project, as well as all other local and regional initiatives that were spawned by the Lewis Centre and its graduates (also to be documented visually).

o Interview with Professor David W Orr about the design process and strategy behind Centre and the second-generation ecological design projects it helped to initiate. The Interview will also include a discussion of David Orr’s forthcoming new book on Ecological Design (see below)

o A video documentary of the Lewis Centre and its associated projects
o A video interview with Professor David Orr on the Lewis Centre and Ecological Design
o An article about the Lewis Centre in a Spanish sustainable design magazine (EcoHabitar)
o An article in Resurgence about David Orr and ecological design
o A report and presentation to the Scottish Ecological Design Association about the study visit.
o The Lewis Centre as a model for the Centre for the Study of Natural Design in Dundee

Baxter, Seaton (2005) ‘Deep Design and the Engineers Conscience: A Global Primer for Design Education’, Proceedings of the 3rd International Engineering and Product Design Education Conference, Napier University, September 2005
Orr, David W. (1992) Ecological Literacy - Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World
Orr, David W. (2002) The Nature of Design - Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention, Oxford University Press
Orr, David W. (2004) ‘The Learning Curve’ Resurgence, No226, pp.1S-20
Orr, David W. (2005) Ecological Design, (To be published later this year; I believe with Island Press)
Wahl, Daniel C. (2005) ‘Ecoliteracy, Ethics and Aesthetics in Natural Design’, in Proceedings of the European Academy of Design Conference on Design System Evolution. Bremen, Germany, March 2005.

Daniel C. Wahl
Centre for the Study of Natural Design
Faculty of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design University of Dundee, Scotland

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