Permaculture ands Sustainable Design

Sustainable design steadily becomes the architecture catch phrase of the day, being thrown around to make us aware that everything we “design” has an environmental burden. Many designers, architects and builders have installed the “idea of green” into their buildings to demonstrate a potential to improve performance and reduce costs through sustainable strategies. Despite all this one fact remains, that is the enviable depletion of fossil fuels, and without a major overhaul of our society, our economy and our politics, the ideas of “sustainable design” are just band-aids on the bigger problem. In the 1970's Bill Mollison and David Holmgren decided to create a design system for sustainability, looking to create a harmony between humans and the land they live on. From this the original incarnation Permaculture was born and over the years it has evolved into a vision of sustainable culture.

Permaculture has an ideal for the world, for everyone to live in a permanently sustainable culture, a method to allow the human race to continue and exist indefinitely on the resources available to us. It is a highly idealistic goal, but a goal that might have to become a reality. To achieve this goal, as you would expect, the ideas behind the movement cover a very broad and complex scope. Even though it started as a method for sustainable agriculture, it has evolved and grown to cover more than just gardening “Permaculture is not the landscape, or even the skills of organic gardening, sustainable farming, energy efficient building or eco-village development as such. But it can be used to design, establish, manage and improve these and all other efforts made by individuals, households and communities towards a sustainable future.” (page xix PPB...

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... spread of some innovative design solutions that illustrate Permaculture principles, but that it has been less effective in spreading the system and design thinking which underlies those solutions.” (PPBS) Mike Reynolds is an architect that created and specialises in what is known as “Earthship Biotecture”, a form of architecture which share the exact same goals as that of Permaculture. Implementing passive design, creating long lasting sustainable design practises, and independence on foils fuels or the “grid”. One of the interesting concepts which they share is how they use recycled materials, Permaculture and Earthship design both celebrate the use of “waste” into their schemes, giving a visual representation of the objects that they recycle.“if modern living generates rubbish, pollution and waste, then it is childish and naive to try to hide and ignore it” (PPBS)