What can design learn from Nature?

Natural processes, such as building up and breaking down, development, disturbance, animal movement, interelement flows, human interaction, and shifting mosaics, operate in every ecosystem. The conservation biologist Michael Soule suggests a number of rules for reserve design that are based on natural patterns:

• well distributed species are less at risk

• large blocks of habitat are safer from species extinctions

• blocks close together are better

• contiguous blocks are better than fragmented

• interconnected blocks are better than isolated

• corridors can make large blocks functionally

• roadless blocks are better

• human disturbance similar to natural ones are less threatening

 

Wild landscapes are affected by climate, soils, interactions, and disturbances. Domestic landscape is affected by land use as well. The greatest changes have been brought about by the destruction and creation of forests.

The values of the land and forest must be most carefully assessed. The characteristic qualities must be identified and measured for uniqueness. Comprehensive landscape plans should be required when planting or extensive felling is planned on a large scale. The patterns established at these times may persist for many years or centuries. Good design may be able to resolve conflicts between characteristic qualities of the landscape and the changes from use. Also, the design should last as long as possible and should be self-sustaining.

 

Design starts with pattern

A pattern is an arrangement of form of elements. Process applied to components yields pattern. Nature is composed of patterns. Organisms have characteristic patterns, such as the branching of trees or the cloud forms of tree crowns. Lichens have lobes, wood grain under stress has spirals. The cracks in tree barks form nets.

Patterns are not still. A circular pattern through time can be recognized as a spiral (the earth’s orbit for example). The pattern should allow for surprises and discontinuities; it can do this if it is flexible. The design of ecosystems is vulnerable to surprises because nature is chaotic (unpredictable) and science itself is uncertain (by definition) about patterns of change in ecosystems.

 

Design is concerned with wholeness and unity

Whole means containing all of the elements to be complete in itself or being a system. In Arthur Koestler’s idea, things are wholes related in nested levels. As identified in ecosystems, wholes have special characteristics. Unity is the way the elements, including shape and scale, of a landscape are combined. Unity is a fundamental objective of landscape design. It is sometimes related to simplicity and character.

Visually, an ecosystem, such as a forest, usually dominates the landscape. From a distance, even-aged forests have much the same impact, in terms of color, shape, and scale, as uneven-aged forests. Diversity becomes more important visually at a smaller scale. Natural forms of the forest are unified with the landscape because the margins are very uneven, and open space in the forest is part of the mosaic caused by the birth and death of individual or groups of trees.

 

Design addresses the spirit of place

The spirit of each place is unique according to Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980). Place is not simply location; it is the total sum of objects in the landscape combined into a unique whole. The identity of place often leads to human identity, thus people call themselves Pullmanites, Oregonians or Appaloosa. The more unique a place the stronger the emotional attachment of the inhabitants. Every place has certain characteristics that enforce the spirit of place, for instance, a strong definition of place. or indicators of great age (trees or rocks), or the distillation of the essence of larger landscapes. A sense of wildness and water also contribute greatly to the spirit of place. The spirit of the place is the best guide to design.

Each place expresses a unique combination of elements, including contrasts, dramatic features, and the presence of water. Design can work to be consistent with the recognized spirit of place. If the design recognizes this aspect of the landscape, it may be stimulated by spirit and it may further enhance it—what it should not do is degrade it. Ecosystem design can emphasize some features above others.

Goals of good designs include: relinking people with genius of their places, revivifying the image and identity with places, and developing and maintaining the identity of places.

 

Design and sensory force

All the elements of design can be combined in an image. Every organism creates an image of its place from what is meaningful to it. This image is what fits the organism to its place. Suckers and caddisworms have simple images; coyotes and humans have more complex ones. Kenneth Boulding (1956) notes that the image as a cognitive construct of the world has several aspects: spatial, temporal, personal, relational, value, and affectional (emotional) for each individual. Cognition is an active relationship that is creatively shaped by the participants. Participation is not an option by the way—every scientist or inhabitant becomes part of the system of observation. The total sum of individual images is a world. Some of the images we impose on nature result from idealized notions of pastoralism or of technological futures. Thus landscapes abound in nostalgic or consumptive trends on many levels of explication—some are iconic, some invisible. We originally perceive the landscape symbolically, but the landscape has other functional dimensions that increase according to use.

Visual force is a psychological interpretation of perceived power in a landscape. As a principle, it is embodied in psychology, art, graphic design and architecture. The human mind responds to visual force in predictable and dynamic ways, for instance, visual forces in landscapes draw the eye down convex slopes and up concave ones— the strength depending on the scale and irregularity of the landform.

The effect of a dominant ecosystem is not completely visual, however. Smell, sound, touch, and even taste play a large part of our appreciation of forests. Crawling (recommended by Gary Snyder), climbing, listening, and tasting (soil, bark, lichen, etc.) can expand our perception of other aspects of the forest. De Tocqueville commented on the ceaseless noises in the forests he encountered in Pennsylvania and Ohio in the 1700s (they kept him awake at night).