"The environmental crisis is a design crisis," assert Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan, in "Ecological Design" released by Island Press. "It is a consequence of how things are made, buildings are constructed, and landscapes are used. Design manifests culture, and culture rests firmly on what we believe to be true about the world. Our present forms of agriculture, architecture, engineering, and industry are derived from design epistemologies incompatible with nature's own." Van der Ryn and Cowan outline five principles that to them make up the core of the "ecological design process":
"Ecological design begins with the intimate knowledge of a particular place."
"No conventional design is executed without a careful accounting of all economic costs. Likewise no ecological design is executed without a careful accounting of all ecological costs, from resource depletion to pollution to habitat destruction. Tracing the full set of ecological impacts of a design is obviously a prerequisite for ameliorating those impacts."
"Ecological design...is a kind of covenant between human communities and other living communities: Nothing in the design should violate the wider integrities of nature....By working with the patterns and processes favored by the living world, we can dramtically reduce the ecological impacts of our designs."
"No one is participant only or designer only. Everyone is participant-designer. Honor the special knowledge that each person brings....The best design expeirences occur when noone can claim credit for the solution--when the solution grows and evolves organically out of a particular situation, process and pattern of communication."
"Making natural cycles and processes visible brings the designed environment back to life. Effective design helps inform us of our place within nature."