The environmental movement has often been accused of being overly negative--trying to stop "progress." The Nature of Design, on the other hand, is about starting things, specifically an ecological design revolution that changes how we provide food, shelter, energy, materials, and livelihood, and how we deal with waste.

Ecological design is an emerging field that aims to recalibrate what humans do in the world according to how the world works as a biophysical system. Design in this sense is a large concept having to do as much with politics and ethics as with buildings and technology.

The book begins by describing the scope of design, comparing it to the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Subsequent chapters describe barriers to a design revolution inherent in our misuse of language, the clockspeed of technological society, and shortsighted politics. Orr goes on to describe the critical role educational institutions might play in fostering design intelligence and what he calls "a higher order of heroism."

Appropriately, the book ends on themes of charity, wilderness, and the rights of children. Astute yet broadly appealing, The Nature of Design combines theory, practicality, and a call to action.

After Orr (environmental studies, Oberlin College) embarked on what was to be a fairly straightforward ecological design project on campus, he found himself entangled with architects, engineers, materials scientists, landscape ecologists, philosophers, fund- raisers, and other exotic professionals. The 21 essays here emerged from that experience.
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"The creativity of thought displayed is refreshing when compared to the hundreds of texts that criticise current practice without offering substitutes. And Orr's understanding of the role pysical surroundings play in human thinking inspires a vital alternative to the technological fundamentalism constricting so much current thought."--Ecologist

Includes bibliographical references (p. [221]-231) and index.

David W. Orr is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College. He is the author of Ecological Literacy and Earth in Mind, as well as more than 100 published articles. Among other awards, he has received a Lyndhurst Prize Fellowship and the National Wildlife Federation's National Achievement Award.

I. The Problem of Ecological Design

1. Introduction: The Design of Culture and the Culture of Design

2. Human Ecology as a Problem of Ecological Design

II. Pathologies and Barriers

3. Slow Knowledge

4. Speed

5. Verbicide

6. Technological Fundamentalism

7. Ideasclerosis

8. Ideasclerosis, Continued

III. The Politics of Design

9. None So Blind: The Problem of Ecological Denial (with David Ehrenfeld)

10. Twine in the Baler

11. Conservation and Conservatism

12. The Politics Worthy of the Name

13. The Limits of Nature and the Educational Nature of Limits

IV. Design as Pedagogy

14. Architecture and Education

15. The Architecture of Science

16. 2020: A Proposal

17. Education, Careers, and Callings

18. A Higher Order of Heroism

V. Charity, Wildness, and Children

19. The Ecology of Giving and Consuming

20. The Great Wilderness Debate, Again

21. Loving Children: The Political Economy of Design

Bibliography

Index