Ecological design is a major part of our coming future and is necessary for the prosperity of our species as caretakers for the world. Sim Van Der Ryn and Stuart Cowan, in their book Ecological Design, address five principles in design that will help to move society in the right direction. These principles are: solutions from your place, ecological accounting, designing with nature, everyone is a designer, and making nature visible. It has been over the course of the last century that building designers and engineers have neglected the entirety of environmental impacts that went into their buildings. They have built, I believe, from a strictly human perspective with regard only to what the majority wants. This book does an excellent job of
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It considers the impacts of any given design, ecological or not. It looks for low cost and low impact relationships in the design of a building and all of its interactions with the outside world. One way I interpret this idea is by asking myself if a building is “invisible.” This describes the impacts of a building and whether or not those impacts are large enough to consider the building there at all. Besides displacing a small amount of habitat, a building should not create any other externalities and should be an equal balance of input to outputs without creating pollutants. Two energy laws summarize this point well, “The energy stored in the inputs must equal the energy stored in the outputs plus any waste” (108), and secondly “that energy degrades in quality or usefulness as it is converted from one form to another” (108). The promotion of ecological accounting with ESCO was a good way of taking those who know what they are doing and showing those who don’t know through action. ESCO installs energy efficiency appliances and helps to reduce energy consumption. The negawatt, or unit for decreased energy demand, is the backbone of their work in ecological accounting. While accounting is a great theoretical and practical use, I find that the world is so engrained into its current way of life that it is hard in some cases to make it positively accountable. There are ways however …show more content…
This success transfers awareness to others by providing endless possibilities for participation and learning. From examining and living in the environment around us to calculating the decreased energy usage in our buildings, we have many plans including this one to make our world a better, cleaner place. I do think that we are capable of a goal like this on a community level. Other parts of the world however need to take different angles in adjusting to sustainable living. This work is of upmost importance but has received the short end of the stick since the world was developed in an incorrect fashion from the beginning. There will come a time however when society will have to move over from its current trend and adapt in the near future. In an ambitious world, we would like to see this change in our lifetimes but as we know from history, many unfortunately do not get the chance to witness the change they invoke. Regardless of timing, change will happen with thanks to those who push change to happen, just like Sim Van Der Ryn and Stuart Cowan in their book Ecological
It considers the impacts of any given design, ecological or not. It looks for low cost and low impact relationships in the design of a building and all of its interactions with the outside world. One way I interpret this idea is by asking myself if a building is “invisible.” This describes the impacts of a building and whether or not those impacts are large enough to consider the building there at all. Besides displacing a small amount of habitat, a building should not create any other externalities and should be an equal balance of input to outputs without creating pollutants. Two energy laws summarize this point well, “The energy stored in the inputs must equal the energy stored in the outputs plus any waste” (108), and secondly “that energy degrades in quality or usefulness as it is converted from one form to another” (108). The promotion of ecological accounting with ESCO was a good way of taking those who know what they are doing and showing those who don’t know through action. ESCO installs energy efficiency appliances and helps to reduce energy consumption. The negawatt, or unit for decreased energy demand, is the backbone of their work in ecological accounting. While accounting is a great theoretical and practical use, I find that the world is so engrained into its current way of life that it is hard in some cases to make it positively accountable. There are ways however …show more content…
This success transfers awareness to others by providing endless possibilities for participation and learning. From examining and living in the environment around us to calculating the decreased energy usage in our buildings, we have many plans including this one to make our world a better, cleaner place. I do think that we are capable of a goal like this on a community level. Other parts of the world however need to take different angles in adjusting to sustainable living. This work is of upmost importance but has received the short end of the stick since the world was developed in an incorrect fashion from the beginning. There will come a time however when society will have to move over from its current trend and adapt in the near future. In an ambitious world, we would like to see this change in our lifetimes but as we know from history, many unfortunately do not get the chance to witness the change they invoke. Regardless of timing, change will happen with thanks to those who push change to happen, just like Sim Van Der Ryn and Stuart Cowan in their book Ecological