Synopses & Reviews
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, livelihood, and deal with waste. Ecological design is an emerging field aiming to recalibrate what humans do in the world with 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. This is a book that combines theory, practicality, and action.
Review
"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."--
EcologistAbout the Author
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.
Table of Contents
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