Submitted: July 24th, 2012Reviewed: January 9th, 2013Published: July 1st, 2013
DOI: 10.5772/55760
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1. Introduction
"Choose only one master-Nature"Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669)
The well-nigh critical changes in the world over the concluding century have been derived from the variety of environmental problems. Growing environmental issues now affect entire the world. The bulk of environmental problems originates in human being greed and interference.
Information technology is well known that planet Earth is experiencing a so-called environmental crisis (ecological crunch). This crunch is characterized by iii major themes:
Rapid growth of the human population and its associated economic activeness,
The depletion of both not-renewable and renewable resources, and
Extensive and intensive damage caused to ecosystems and biodiversity.
The environmental crisis is a predicament of inappropriate design-it is a consequence of how cities have been adult, industrialization undertaken, and ecoscapes used. Fundamentally, the problem has been one of inadequate integration of ecological concerns into planning (Shu-Yang et al., 2004).
In many ways, the ecology crisis is a design crisis. It is clear that design has not been given a rich plenty context. Pattern is a hinge that inevitably connects culture and nature through exchanges of materials, flow of energy, and choices of state use. The every world of buildings, artifacts, and domesticated landscape is a design world, 1 shaped by human being (Van Der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).
Some environmental bug have arisen from pattern problems. Design can take a crucial bear upon upon the surroundings in many unlike ways. This is because every design decision is an environmental decision. Design is a issue of how things are made, and the world has been shaped by the designers. The present forms of everything in the world have been derived from pattern. It is clear that design has been previously used but to meet human needs. Unfortunately, in many past situations environmental effects were ignored during the design stage. Blueprint has not been taught in the context of its ecological impact. Many practices in the design field have been done with unsustainable blueprint principles. The ecology bug have additional the sustainable explorations necessary for protecting ecological system in order to accost and find solutions to the bug. Scientists, planners and designers have questioned the effectiveness of design and have suggested incentives as alternatives. At the end of 20th century, the power of blueprint for to solve the problem and the potential of design for sustainability accept been noticed; an integration that goes from ecological processes and functions to blueprint has started. Design and its potential have been regarded a creative problem solving activity. While ecological sciences provide the knowledge and guidance, blueprint provides artistic solutions for the environmental problems.
In a world facing a future characterized both by expanding metropolitan regions and by ecological crisis, it is imperative that we re-think the relationship of urban dwellers to the natural environment. The 21st century is expected to be the kickoff in history in which a majority of humanity lives in cities, and if present trends continue, it may also be the one in which those urban populations inflict irreversible damage on the earth's living systems (Eisensten, 2001).
Designers and pattern critics are increasingly emphasizing the bodily or, potentially, radical nature of an ecological arroyo to design which implies a new critique-a recognition of the fact that to adopt an ecological approach to design is, by definition, to question and oppose the status quo (Madge, 1997). In this context design has a crucial role to play in achieving sustainability and to provide solutions for ecology problems. In parts of the earth dominated past humans, landscape design can have significant and positive environmental effects (Helfand et al., 2006).
Ecological design explicitly addresses the design dimension of the environmental crunch. It is not a style. Information technology is a class of engagement and partnership with nature that is not bound to a particular blueprint profession (Van Der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).
In recent years ecological design has been practical to an increasingly diverse range of technologies and innovative solutions for the management of resources. Ecological technologies accept been created for the food sector, waste conversion industries, compages and landscape design, and to the field of environmental protection and restoration (Todd et al., 2003).
Equally environmental problems escalate, ecological design in mural compages has increasing in academia and practice. Ecological design is an integrative ecologically responsible blueprint field of study. Ecological pattern has been emerged as a ways to model ecological processes and functions, and therefore as a model for sustainability. Today'due south ecological landscape design movement tends to address design problems.
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two. The relationship between ecology, sustainability and design
Environmental, sustainability and pattern are different fields, but they have been merged together in recent years. This is because human being lifestyle is having an increasingly negative bear upon on the surrounding environments.
Ecology, in the 100 years since its inception, has increasingly provided the scientific foundation for understanding natural processes, managing environmental resources and achieving sustainable development. By the 1960s, ecology's clan with the environmental movement popularized the scientific discipline and introduced it to the design professions (due east.g. landscape architecture, urban design and architecture) (Makhzoumi, 2000).
"Environmental" in the profession of landscape compages and planning can't be understood solely as meaning the relationship between nonhuman life forms and their environment. The term ecology is traditionally used as shorthand for the sum of the biophysical forces that have shaped and continue to shape the physical world. Thus at that place are other dimensions to exist recognized if we are to understand the key nature of environmental: that of procedure, integration, and humanity (Ahern et al., 2001).
The relationship between blueprint and environmental is a very shut i, and makes for some unexpected complexities (Papanek, 1995). Environmental explains how the natural world is and how information technology behaves, and design is also the fundamental intervention betoken for making sustainability in environmental (Effigy 1.). The knowledge gained from ecology can influence landscape design.
Figure ane.
The relationship betwixt ecology, sustainability and design
In landscape compages ecology's emphasis on natural processes and the interrelatedness of landscape components influenced outlook and method and prompted an ecological approach to blueprint (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999). The ecological component is crucial in mural pattern according to the principles of sustainability.
The typical relationship of designer and scientist presumes that most of what tin can be known is known. The designer is the creative partner; the scientist is an interactive book. Since the scientific base for ecological blueprint is nascent, the nature of this relationship is flawed. Science and design are complementary ways to generate knowledge (and therefore both are creative endeavors). Scientists solve problems inductively, forming generalized principles from specific observations (Effigy 2.). Designers use full general principles to solve specific problems deductively. The cognition bachelor for ecological design would greatly increase if designed landscapes were used equally ecological enquiry sites. Designed landscapes that are typical of the surrounding region, with one to a few clear themes and repeated patterns (replication), are potential ecological research sites (Galatowitsch, 1998).
Figure 2.
Design and environmental are complementary problem-solving techniques (Galatowitsch, 1998)
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3. Ecological sustainability
Sustainability is not a single motion or approach. It is varied equally the communities and interests currently grappling with the issues it raises. One the one hand, sustainability is the province of global policy makers and environmental experts. One the one manus, sustainability is also the domain of grassroots environmental and social groups, indigenous peoples preserving traditional practices, and people committed to irresolute their ain communities. The environmental educator David W. Orr calls these two approaches technological sustainability and ecological sustainability. While both are coherent responses to the ecology crunch, they are far autonomously in their specifics. Technological sustainability, which seems to get most of the airtime, may be characterized this mode: "every trouble has either a technological answer or a market solution. In that location are no dilemmas to be avoided, no domains where angels fear to tread." Ecological sustainability is the task of finding alternatives to the practices that got united states into trouble in the offset place; it is necessary to rethink agriculture, shelter, energy apply, urban design, transportation, economic science, community pattern, resource employ, forestry, the importance of wilderness, and our central values. While the two approaches have important points of contact, including a shared sensation of the extent of the global environmental crisis, they embody 2 very different visions of a sustainable club (Van Der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).
A goal of ecological design is to help come across this vision of ecological sustainability, by finding ways of manufacturing goods, constructing buildings, and planning more circuitous enterprises, such every bit business and industrial parks, while reducing resource consumption and fugitive ecological damage to the degree possible (Shu-Yang et al., 2004).
Ecological blueprint strives to achieve an increasing reliance on renewable sources of energy and materials, while maintaining standards of quality of goods and services and reducing overall resources consumption, waste generation, and ecological impairment through efficiencies of apply, re-utilize, and recycling.
Ecological design provides a framework for uniting conventional perspectives on design and management with environmental ones, past incorporating the consideration of ecological concerns at relevant spatial and temporal scales. If the principles of ecological blueprint are rigorously applied, of import progress will exist made towards ecological sustainability (Shu-Yang et al., 2004).
Landscape pattern mostly depends on natural resource, so ecological sustainability is very of import. Landscape design contributes to the ecological sustainability.
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4. Sustainable blueprint
There is no verifiable starting point for the current sustainable design movement. It seems to have converged from several different wide ideas concerning our relationship with the natural world. Some of the key figures who have contributed to the give-and-take include Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Ian McHarg (Melt and VanDerZanden, 2011).
Sustainability is an ecological term that has been used since the early 1970s to mean: "the capacity of a system to maintain a continuous menses of whatever each function of that organization needs for a salubrious beingness," and when applied to ecosystems containing human beings refers to the limitations imposed by the power of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities. The term sustainable development was get-go used in the early on '80s, but was popularized by the Brundtland Report of 1987. "Sustainable" has become the buzzword of the '90s in the same manner "greenish" was in the '80s, and is equally open to different interpretations and misuse. The Brundtland Report adopted a global perspective on the consumption of energy and resource, and emphasized the imbalance between rich and poor parts of the earth, arguing that: "Sustainable development requires that those who are more than affluent adopt lifestyles within the planet's ecological means." Yet, because the written report also argued that economic growth or development is nevertheless possible as long as it is green growth, this has been interpreted by many to endorse a "business as usual" arroyo, with just a nod in the direction of environmental protection. This ignores the real pregnant of sustainable development, which is enshrined in the widely quoted concept of "futurity":..."meeting the needs of the nowadays without compromising the ability of time to come generations to run across their own needs."
When applied to design, this not only introduces or reintroduces the ideas of ethical and social responsibility, but besides the notion of time and timescale. Thinking about the life cycle of products through time, and considerations nigh blueprint for recycling, accept led to the concept of DfD (Design for Disassembly) followed past the idea of going Beyond recycling towards the design of long-life, durable products. These two concepts are non equally contradictory every bit they sound, equally Victor Papanek has recently remarked: "To design durable goods for eventual disassembly may sound like an oxymoron, withal information technology is greatly of import in a sustainable world. The term "sustainable design" has begun to be used in the last 15 years or and then to refer to a broader, longer-term vision of ecological blueprint. At the Centre for Sustainable Blueprint, established at the Surrey Establish of Art and Blueprint in July 1995, sustainable pattern ways "analyzing and irresolute the 'systems' in which we make, use, and dispose of products," as opposed to more than limited, short-term DFE. The ECO2 group makes a like distinction between "green design, projection-based, single issue and relatively short-term; and sustainable' pattern, which is system-based, long-term" ethical design. Emma Dewberry and Phillip Goggin have also explored the distinctions between ecological design and sustainable design; arguing that, whereas ecological design can be applied to all products and used as a suitable guide for designing at product level: "The concept of sustainable design, yet, is much more complex and moves the interface of design outwards toward societal conditions, evolution, and ethics.... This suggests changes in design and the part of design, including an inevitable move from a product to a systems-based approach, from hardware to software, from ownership to service, and will involve concepts such every bit dematerialization and "a general shift from physiological to psychological needs." Finally, they emphasize the extent to which consumption patterns must modify, and refer to the inequality betwixt developed and developing nations, the fact that xx percent of the world'southward population consumes %80 of the globe'southward resources and conclude that ecological blueprint does fit into a global move toward sustainability, merely has many limitations in this context. This is the bespeak fabricated by Gui Bonsiepe, who has expressed the fear that ecological design will remain the luxury of the affluent countries while "the cost of environmental standards would exist shifted onto the shoulders of the 3rd World." (Madge, 1997).
Sustainability can be viewed as the long-term outcome of maintaining landscape integrity. Designing for sustainable landscapes necessitates a holistic and integrative outlook that is based on ecological understanding and sensation of the potentialities and limitations of a given landscape. Such understanding ensures that in accommodating future uses their touch on existing ecosystems and essential ecological processes and biological and landscape diversity is predictable. This will allow for healthy ecosystems and long-term ecological stability (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999).
Designs that promote sustainable landscapes should be simultaneously aware of local values and resources also equally regional and national ones, as sustainability is the domain of both. Further, achieving landscape sustainability requires patience, humility and a blueprint arroyo that attends to calibration, customs, self-reliance, traditional noesis and the wisdom of nature's own (Van der Ryn and Cowan, 1996).
Whereas maintaining landscape integrity and designing for sustainability tin can be seen as the practical objectives of ecological landscape design, the design of creative and meaningful places addresses aesthetic concerns.
The following is a palette of terms that in some way define or refer to sustainable pattern:
Design for environment,
Ecological blueprint (ecodesign/eco-design),
Ecology design,
Environmentally oriented design,
Ecologically oriented design,
Environmentally responsible design,
Socially responsible design,
Environmentally sensitive product blueprint,
Sustainable production development,
Green blueprint,
Life-cycle design,
Dematerialization,
Eco-efficiency design,
Energy efficient design, and
Biodesign (Deniz, 2002).
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5. The part of technology in ecological design
Ecology problems become an increasingly important aspect of the designer's work to minimize the risks and to solve the problems. Considering of the rapid technological development, environmental problems increase day by day. On the other hand, new technologies oft tend to exist less dangerous than what they replace, and hence designers may find themselves in the forefront of identifying issues which must be addressed by applied science. Sometimes, existing technologies may non be able to provide the solution, and the designer may have to influence the development of a new technological approach. Designers must also follow technological developments in society to be certain of incorporating the virtually environmentally advanced technologies (Deniz, 2002).
Engineering has been the primary method past which we arbitrate on the land and modify the ecosystems to ensure our existence, yet its diverse manifestations are most often ignored in discussions of the designed landscape. In fact, much of the rationale for this exhibit might be based upon the obfuscation of ecological clarity past engineering science and the subsequent employment of more than benign and expressive techniques for bringing dorsum such clarity. In the ordinary landscape, the instances in which intentional land design aims at a higher, symbolic meaning in some decipherable form are few when compared with the countless millions of ordinary landscape structured by the dominant, operative, contemporary technological paradigms. In one sense, we have covered upward our ecosystems with our technologies; we have obscured a degree of innate clarity of the former with the vast complexities of the latter. While science and engineering science have made information technology possible to embrace deeper levels of ecosystem knowledge, they take likewise enabled the physical camouflage and subsequent darkening of dimensions of the landscape once readily accessible to more fundamental peoples. With technological hegemony, our ecosystems take gained little and lost a lot (Thayer Jr., 1998).
This raises the whole issue of the human relationship between design and the "Appropriate Applied science" (AT) movement in the last twenty to thirty years. Schumacher (1973) coined the term "intermediate technology" to signify "engineering science of product by the masses, making use of the best of modern noesis and experience, conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of environmental, gentle in its use of deficient resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of machines". The cardinal tenet of appropriate technology is that a engineering science should be designed to be compatible with its local setting. Examples of electric current projects that are generally classified as appropriate engineering science include passive solar design, active solar collectors for heating and cooling, small windmills to provide electricity, roof-top gardens and hydroponic greenhouses, permaculture, and worker-managed craft industries. At that place is general understanding, however, that the main goal of the appropriate technology movement is to raise the cocky reliance of people on local level. Characteristics of cocky reliant communities that appropriate technology can assist facilitate include: low resource usage coupled with the extensive recycling; preference for renewable over nonrenewable resources; accent on environmental harmony; emphasis on minor industries; and a loftier caste of social cohesion and sense of customs (Roseland, 1997).
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half-dozen. Emerge of ecological mural design
Mural compages is a multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of; botany, horticulture, the fine arts, architecture, industrial design, geology and the earth sciences, environmental psychology, geography, and environmental.
Landscape architecture has ecological thinking at the core of its legacy (Mozingo, 1997). As a result of a tendency favoring ecological perspectives in design, significant changes take occurred in the landscape architecture profession in contempo decades through the motility to integrate ecological perspectives (Hooper et al., 2008).
Thinking ecologically most design is certainly not a "new" idea. Since ancient times "designers" looked to nature for "solutions" to their common issues; they saw nature as the perfect model to follow. Fifty-fifty though, in recent times, an increase in ecological education and ecology awareness is apparent amongst design professionals, there is still the need to better understand the expression of environmental through pattern (Lomba-Ortiz, 2003). In the face of the environmental problems new approaches to reconciling the divide betwixt ecology and design accept been explored in landscape architecture.
Since the 1960s, ecology has increasingly influenced the design professions, providing for a holistic and dynamic outlook on nature, environment and landscape. The different dimensions of ecology have come to imply the ability to recollect broadly, to search for patterns that connect and to find nature with insight. Alternatively, ecological cognition allows a comprehensive understanding of landscape as the outcome of interacting natural and cultural evolutionary processes which account for blueprint, diversity, sustainability and stability (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999).
To date, withal, ecological pattern has been principally concerned with the realistic emulation of ecological class, function, and, where possible, procedure. As an outgrowth of, and to some caste, a fusion between landscape architecture, ecology, ecology planning, and the building scientific discipline aspects of compages, at that place is a distinctive functional emphasis in the bailiwick. Ironically, artistic elements and visual aesthetics accept not been a priority in a discipline that bears the characterization of "blueprint." I would attribute this principally to the dominance of landscape architecture in influencing ecological design, itself (until recently) a discipline characterized by a schism betwixt garden blueprint and horticulture in ane domain, and technical ecologists concerned with ecological restoration and reconstruction in the other. This remediative, reactive "applied environmental" exercise of landscape architecture forth with related environmental professions have understandably been the progenitors of the new discipline of ecological design, largely (and understandably) equally a response to global environmental crises (Lister, 2005).
Motivated past environmental values, mural architects became increasingly knowledgeable almost ecological principles and systems (Meyer, 2000). Ecology, the study of interactions betwixt organisms and their environments, has long been a compelling theme for kinesthesia, practitioners, and students of landscape design and planning. Frederick Law Olmsted'due south visionary public designs, Jens Jensen's native plantings, May Watt's observations of vernacular landscapes, and Ian McHarg's book, Design with Nature, are all milestones of ecological thinking in landscape design and planning (Johnson and Hill, 2001). McHarg (1969), Spirn (1984) and Hough (1995) played seminal roles in applying theories and principles of ecological landscape design to urban areas (Özgüner et al., 2007). lan McHarg who, perhaps more than any other, popularized environmental in landscape architecture. Patrick Geddes is the initiator of an ecological approach in blueprint and planning and because he offered an integrative view of the environs that embraced urban pattern, landscape design and planning. John Tillman Lyle offers a comprehensive approach embracing theory, practice and method (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999).
In the belatedly 1860'south Frederick Law Olmstead supported the idea that landscape architects were stewards of the land. Olmstead's designed landscapes borrowed aesthetically from the picturesque but he was overtly conscious of ecological processes playing a disquisitional office in the function and pattern of landscape spaces (Ware, 2004).
The early influence of ecology can be traced to the work of tardily nineteenth century visionary biologist Patrick Geddes, the conceptual initiator of an ecological arroyo to urban and landscape design and landscape planning. Patrick Geddes had a articulate, overall conceptual strategy for improving the manmade environment and for advocating a sympathetic coexistence with the natural environment. In his 'biological principles of economics' he came closest to the present day concept of sustainability (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999).
Ecological thinking was merely resumed with the publication of lan McHarg'southward (1969) 'Design with Nature'. The significance of McHarg's work, however, lies elsewhere, namely in introducing ecological understanding to the profession. McHarg believed that environmental had the potential to emancipate landscape architects from the static scenic images of ornamental horticulture by steering them away from capricious and arbitrary designs (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999). Ian McHarg's work fore grounded much of the early sustainable blueprint discussions of the 1970's and into the 1980's. Carl Steinz's, Fred Steiner's, and Rob Thayer'southward earliest work was a critique of McHarg'south methods (Ware, 2004).
John Tillman Lyle's (1985) 'Design for Human Ecosystems' is a comprehensive integration of ecological concepts and mural pattern. The term human being ecosystems is proposed by Lyle to signify the totality of the landscape at hand as a warning against a strongly visual notion of landscape assessment and equally a reminder that the landscape needs to be evaluated as the outcome of natural and cultural processes. Lyle argues the necessity of making full utilise of ecological understanding in the process of designing ecosystems; only then can "we shape ecosystems that manage to fulfill all their inherent potentials for contributing to human being purposes, that are sustainable, and that support nonhuman communities too".
Three aspects of Lyle's (1985) piece of work are of straight relevance in establishing the conceptual foundation for ecological design. The first is that he attempts to tackle the complication of design method and offers a disquisitional investigation of the pattern process in the context of ecosystem, its role, structure and ecological (rather than economic) rationality. The second is that he includes 'management' as an integral part of ecosystem pattern, arguing that ecosystems like any organic entity have a variable future and as such, their design should exist probabilistic; information technology is difficult to predict the changes that volition have place. The implication here is that design is an ongoing process and that the final product of pattern is only one phase in this process; it should non be the objective. It as well implies that pattern is interactive because it takes into account future alter resulting from the designed arrangement'southward interaction with its surroundings. A tertiary attribute of Lyle's work is that he breaches the professional person categorization of landscape architecture and mural planning. The terms 'mural design' and 'landscape planning' are often used interchangeably, however, uses 'blueprint' as giving form to physical phenomena 'to correspond such activity at every scale'. In this he follows others (Steinitz, 1979 and McHarg, 1969) who refer to the regional planning scale while using 'design'. Lyle viewed mural planning's focus on the rational every bit inevitably excluding the intuitive (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999).
More recently, designers such every bit Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, amid many others, have attempted, with some degree of success, to accost ecological issues through their designs. "Green Architecture," "Alternative Architecture," "Sustainable Pattern," and "Ecological Blueprint," are some of the terms commonly used today to describe a special expression of blueprint that takes every bit its primary driving forcefulness nature'due south processes. Van Der Ryn and Cowan (Ecological Pattern, 1996) defined this form of expression as "whatever form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." A "new" motility among design professionals has been developing for some time now with many of its principles synthesized by the current "green" movement in pattern (Lomba-Ortiz, 2003).
Ecological design is an emerging interdisciplinary subject area and practice. In fact, many would argue that it is a transdisciplinary field, concerned with the creation of entirely new applications that may emerge from its progenitor disciplines or ascend from a synthesis of several. Influenced principally by environmental, the environmental sciences, environmental planning, architecture, and landscape studies, ecological design is one of several rapidly evolving (theoretical and practical) approaches to more sustainable, humane, and environmentally responsible development. As such, it may too be considered a critical approach to navigating the interface between civilization and nature. In the broadest sense, ecological blueprint emerges from the interdependent and dynamic relationship between ecology and conclusion making.
Van Der Ryn and Cowan (1996) described ecological design as a hinge that connects civilization and nature, allowing humans to suit and integrate nature's processes with human creations. In modern industrialized societies, human culture and nature are perceived and treated every bit dissever realms, nevertheless their interface offers fertile footing for the cosmos of new, hybridized natural/cultural ecologies and the rehabilitation and re(dis)covery of others. Ecological design is inspired by the nexus of these worlds and the urgent need to blur the boundary between them; it seizes on the creative tensions between them and, as such, may offer opportunities for and insights to a re(dis)covered place of "living lightly" with the land (Lister, 2007).
By the beginning of the 21st century, ecological design had emerged as an expression of a sustainability world-view, which seeks to integrate the human enterprise with a sustainable harvest of resources, while ensuring that stresses caused to natural ecosystems are within the bounds of viability. If this can be achieved, the integrity of both the human being economic system and of natural ecosystems can be maintained. As such, ecological design is an all-encompassing concept, every bit it deals with the sustainability of:
The enterprises of families, neighborhoods, and cities;
The structure of buildings in a manner that decreases resources use and environmental damage to the degree possible;
The manufacturing of certifiably greenish products;
The organic product of foods and other renewable resources;
The integration of these various activities within ecologically planned mutualisms, such as industrial and concern parks, which are designed to maintain loftier production while reducing the use of resources and minimizing waste; and
The maintenance of indigenous biodiversity (Shu-Yang et al., 2004).
Landscape architects go on to speculate how we can blueprint with the materials of nature and not take the result be confused for nature itself (Ware, 2004). Beth Meyer asserts, 'to some information technology might seem odd that mural architects looked toward art and design theory and exercise when seeking direction about folding ecological principles and environmental values into their creative processes. Merely this simultaneous look to art every bit well as scientific discipline and to theories of site specificity and phenomenology as well as ecology was critical to the successful integration of environmentalism into landscape architectural design.' (Meyer, 2002).
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7. Ecological landscape design
Ecological landscape design is based on an ecological understanding of landscape which ensures a holistic, dynamic, responsive and intuitive arroyo (Figure 3.). It is holistic considering it simultaneously considers past and present as well as local and regional landscape patterns and processes. It is responsive because it develops from a realization of the constraints and opportunities of context whether natural, cultural or a combination of both. Ecological landscape blueprint is guided by three central, mutually inclusive objectives: the maintenance of landscape integrity; promoting landscape sustainability; and reinforcing the natural and cultural spirit of identify. Ecological mural design engages the designer's rational, intellectual, emotional and artistic capabilities (Makhzoumi and Pungetti, 1999).
Ecological pattern develops out of two areas of inquiry. On the one manus, it is the outcome of ecology's interface with the ecology blueprint professions. Despite the differing perspectives and focus of interest, a number of common concepts take been outlined. On the other hand, ecological mural blueprint also utilizes fundamental ecological. Input from these two areas of enquiry forms the foundation for ecological mural blueprint which is here seen as integrating four overlapping attributes (Effigy 3.).
Figure 3.
Framework for ecological mural design, drawing on concepts from environmental (left) and ecological pattern (right)
The first is a holistic arroyo to landscape understanding, integrating abiotic, biotic and cultural mural components. The second is a dynamic approach in which mural is investigated along two continuums: a spatial one, i.eastward. move between a larger scale and a local one; and a temporal one representing the evolutionary historical evolution of the landscape. The tertiary is ecological mural design's responsiveness to the constraints and opportunities of context whether natural, cultural or a combination of both. Responsiveness besides dictates an anticipatory approach that considers the bear upon of the blueprint on existing ecosystems and resources. Finally, ecological mural design is intuitive, encompassing not only the rationality of the outer world but also the neglected 'intangible relationships' of the inner world. This intuitive approach embraces a new definition of creativity that departs from the formal, i.e. object-centered, appearance-oriented aesthetics to a phenomenological participatory aesthetics where the emphasis is on the totality of human being experience of the object (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999).
Reviewing ecology'south interaction with the ecology blueprint professions reveals a broad range of concepts, solutions and approaches (Figure iv.). The contributions in architecture and the urban landscape design include practical strategies (e.k. energy conservation, ecological networks) and design solutions to specific problems (e.m. earth-sheltered architecture and bioclimatic design). The interaction of ecology and landscape compages has been more than extensive, leading to a holistic approach to landscape design. All the contributions, however, find inspiration in nature and aim to shape man's environment sustainably and 'beautifully'.
Ecological landscape design integrates input from landscape ecology and pattern, both of which are seen equally providing parallel and complementary, admitting dissimilar methodological approaches. The analytic and descriptive nature of mural ecology, the science, provides for a holistic agreement of existing landscapes, while the intuitive and creative problem-solving capabilities of design prescribe alternative courses for future landscape development (Makhzoumi, 2000).
In the different steps of the blueprint procedure a lot of information has been needed to analyze and evaluate ecological processes and functions. Thus ecological design has been interdisciplinary discipline and practice.
Over the past xx years landscape architecture has re-invested in ecologically driven design. Ware (2004) investigates the following typologies:
Interpretation and Environmental Education
Environmental Remediation/Re-vegetation
Re-Utilise/Re-programming
Eco-Revelatory Pattern
The Fine art of Landscape Function
Intertwining Ecologies
Synthetic Ecologies
Simulated 'natural' Attractions
The typological framework aims to illustrate and differentiate current methods of approaching ecological design in landscape architecture. The viii categories include a critical reflection as to how the work itself may not be addressing much of the dynamic, ecological processes that the projects are predicated upon (Ware, 2004).
Figure 4.
The interface of ecology with architecture, mural compages and urban mural design (Makhzuomi and Pungetti, 1999)
7.1. Principles of ecological landscape pattern
The main ecological principles concerning cities are that:
Cities are ecosystems;
Cities are spatially heterogeneous;
Cities are dynamic;
Man and natural processes interact in cities; and
Ecological processes are yet at work and are important in cities.
The first iii principles address the construction of cities and the modify in structure through time. The remaining ii principles focus on ecological processes in cities (Table 1.).
The first principle suggests that mural design theory and management practice must accost all the components of such systems. Urban ecosystems include four broad kinds of components (organisms, a physical setting and atmospheric condition, social structures, and the congenital environment) all interacting with one some other. Mural designs and management strategies that are aimed at 1 or two of these components or interactions, in reality have the potential to affect them all. Landscape designs that admit and work with the connections betwixt the social, biological, physical, and built components of the arrangement are much less likely to produce unintended negative consequences, and are more likely to contribute to ecological sustainability. Furthermore, enhanced quality of urban life depends on all components of the urban ecosystem, not just some of them (Cadenasso and Pickett, 2008)
Principles
Summary of Implication for Mural Design
Cities are ecosystems
Design affects all four components of human ecosystems.
Cities are heterogeneous
Blueprint should enhance heterogeneity, and its ecological functions.
Cities are dynamic
Design must accommodate internal and external changes projects can experience.
Human and natural processes interact in cities
Design should recognize and program for feedbacks betwixt social and natural processes.
Ecological processes remain important in cities
Remnant ecological processes yielding ecological services should be maintained or restored.
Table ane
A brief summary of the general implications of each of the v principles of urban ecology for ecologically motivated landscape design and management
The second principle suggests that interactions and transfers among patches inside the urban matrix are affected by landscape design and direction. Urban landscape design should advisedly consider the heterogeneity and its role in maintaining desirable functions such as biodiversity, storm h2o retentiveness, microclimate mitigation, and carbon sequestration. The interaction between a particular landscape project and next patches of similar or contrasting landscape structure tin can enhance the office and value of individual projects. This may mean paying detail attending to the boundaries betwixt contrasts within or between projects to enhance or protect from exchanges.
The 3rd principle means that landscape designs should conform change. Natural disturbances, farthermost climate events, shifting economical investment or disinvestment, the maturation of households, and the aging of or renovation of infrastructure are but some of the examples of the kinds of dynamism that landscape designs and management will have to respond to. Persistent equilibrium in cities is unlikely. Designs that program for successional changes in vegetation take redundancies in the face of disturbance, or that encourage use by different age groups may be more resilient in changing cities.
The fourth principle suggests that both of these major categories must be addressed as landscape design goals. A pattern that satisfies only obvious social criteria, such as recreation or efficiency of commerce, misses an opportunity to contribute to ecosystem services that may ultimately have corking social value. All landscape designs and management schemes should be judged for their ability to contribute to both social and ecological goods and services, and to reduce both social and ecological risks and vulnerabilities.
The 5th principle means that landscape designs and management practices have the opportunity to preserve and promote those basic biological processes upon which human health and well-being depend. It will be important to provide for these functions even in areas beyond the large green parcels usually targeted for this kind of benefit. The control of water menstruum and infiltration, the retentiveness of limiting and hence potentially polluting nutrients, the sequestration of carbon dioxide, the neutralization of toxics, the maintenance of soil respiration, the product of biomass, the amelioration of climate extremes, the mitigation of natural disturbance, and the preservation of biodiversity, are simply some of the processes that can exist in diverse places in designed systems. Landscape designs and management protocols can be purposefully planned so every bit to maintain, or in some cases restore, as many of these kinds of natural processes equally possible throughout the urban matrix. Every bit such, landscape blueprint and direction can provide creative new ways to insinuate ecological processes in cities (Cadenasso and Pickett, 2008).
Ecologically designed urban landscapes are ones that can use both ecological processes and homo values every bit form-giving elements. In improver to their many environmental benefits, these landscapes -which include systems such equally energy efficient buildings, storm water infiltration, sewage handling wetlands, and urban forests- can as well contribute to local cultures of sustainability that, like all cultures, both shape and are shaped by the built and designed environment. If they are to do so, nonetheless, their designers must recall conspicuously most the experience of the users of the urban landscape, and peculiarly about the meanings and lessons that they derive from their surround. The means that people learn from and respond to the urban environment are critical to the prospects for sustainability, if for no other reason than that for most of the states, it is the landscape of the city that helps to shape our view of nature and our relation to it (Eisenstein, 2001).
Ecological landscape designs autumn into iv categories:
Preservation of existing, functioning ecological systems;
Enhancement or re-establishment of degraded ecological systems;
Intensification of ecological processes to mitigate potential or existing ecological degradation; and
Environmental interventions which reduce nonrenewable resource consumption (Mozingo, 1997).
Van Der Ryn and Cowan (1996) accept pointed out principles of ecological blueprint Table 2.. The first principle grounds the design in the details of place. In the words of Wendell Drupe, nosotros need to enquire, "What is here? What will nature permit us to exercise here? What will nature help us to do here?" The The second principle provides criteria for evaluating the ecological impacts of a given pattern. The third principle suggests that these impacts tin exist minimized past working in partnership with nature. The fourth principle implies that ecological design is the work non just of experts, but of entire communities. The 5th principle tells united states that constructive design transforms awareness past providing ongoing possibilities for learning and participation. Taken together, these five principles assistance us to think most the integration of environmental and design.
Principles
Summary of Implication for Mural Design
Solutions grow from place
Ecological pattern grows from an intimate, detailed knowledge of the place and its nuances.
Make nature visible
Make sure natural cycles and processes are visible to bring the designed environment dorsum to life.
Pattern with nature
Nature's living processes offering opportunities to blueprint using natural cycles, natural waste, and regeneration as part of the total design.
Ecological accounting informs design
By tracing the environmental impacts of a design, we can find the more ecologically sound options.
Everyone is a designer
Mind to every vocalization in the pattern process.
Table ii
Principles of ecological design
seven.ii. Examples of ecological landscape design
7.ii.1. The West Davis Pond
The W Davis Pond in Davis, California, is exemplary of the new landscape infinite of ecological design. The subdivision of a single family and low-rise apartment neighborhood required capacity improvement of an existing storm-water-handling settling pond. This prosaic infrastructure requirement innovatively integrates a synthetic habitat for numerous over-wintering migratory birds and resident wildlife whose wetland habitats accept largely been destroyed in the Primal Valley.
The swimming had pre-existing evolution on three sides: an arterial roadway edged past backyard fences, a long border of direct adjacent backyard fences, and warehouse commercial uses. On the 4th side, the project developers and their team of engineers, environmental scientists, and landscape architects conceived of the pond as integral to the open infinite of the new evolution. In lieu of a more typical suburban park, between the housing and the pond, a bicycle path, part of a famous city-wide organisation, incorporates two pond overlooks and a constructed arroyo channel as a children'southward play surface area. Between the manicured, exotic landscape of the housing and the habitat planting of the pond, transitional "native planting" envelopes the wheel path, overlooks, and play area (Effigy five.). Most of the species are not native to this part of California, and many are unhealthy or dying.
As i of the start storm-water-treatment wildlife ponds in the Cardinal Valley, and one of the first wetland restoration projects within an urban context, the project is commendable in ways-information technology is based on sound ecological scientific discipline, it achieves its conspicuously stated ecological goals, information technology is innovative, and it manifests stiff community support. The project was washed with conscience, care, and the considerable risk that precedents e'er entail (Mozingo, 1997).
Figure 5.
The West Davis Pond (Anonymous, 2012)
The West Davis Pond is a new kind of ecologically integrated projection, with measurable ecological benefits that nosotros want to increasingly infiltrate into the landscape. The Pond is an enhanced wetland wildlife habitat, while its chief purpose is to retain storm water runoff and help prevent flooding. In the dry out months, h2o is provided by a supplementary well. The Pond is enclosed by a security fence and is designated a "Wild fauna Preserve" and "Sensitive Habitat Area" past the City of Davis. Native trees and shrubs grow on the slopes around the Pond and provide habitat for a variety of wildlife (Bearding, 2012).
seven.2.2. The Glenn W. Daniel King Estate Park
The Glenn W. Daniel King Estate Park encompasses fourscore acres of a northward-south ridge overlooking the East Bay Hills and an expansive panorama of the San Francisco Bay. The park is the largest open infinite and only urban wild land west of Interstate 580, the city's social and physical divide. The Glenn W. Daniel Rex Estate Park is not blueprint for a park constructed as a single project. Rather, it is a guide for a sustained effort to bring to fruition a park that is ecologically good for you and well integrated into the social life of its community (Figure half dozen.). The park lies inside a domicile owning, heart-grade, primarily African American neighborhood considerably integrated with European American, Latino and Asian American residents (Mozingo et al., 1998).
Effigy six.
The Glenn West. Daniel King Manor Park Primary plan (Mozingo et al., 1998)
A partnership ethic respects both cultural diversity and biodiversity. In the hills above Oakland, California, a culturally various middle-form neighborhood consisting of a majority of African Americana along with many European, Asian, and Latin Americans worked in partnership with the each other and with landscape architect Louise Mozingo of the University of California, Berkeley. The goal was to restore biodiversity to the oak groves from which the city derived its proper noun and ecological heritage. Together they devised a plan to develop the neighborhood'due south The Glenn Westward. Daniel King Manor Park to do good from the diversity of perennials grasses, oak savannahs, and brushy chaparral indigenous to the area. At the same time, they revamped hiking trails, added a recreation center, and increased security. The resulting principal plan provided "a template for how communities can become agile partners in the fulfillment of their own environmental visions" (Merchant, 2004).
7.2.3. Village of Yorkville Park
The idea of this urban park dates back to the tardily 1950s when a block of Victorian-era row houses was demolished along Cumberland Street to let for the structure of the Bloor Danforth subway line. The park sits at the cusp of ii neighborhoods: the modest quondam Yorkville neighborhood with its late 19th and early 20th century row houses, and the high-rise commercial cadre that has built upwardly along the Bloor Street corridor since the subway opened. For years, this highly visible site remained a parking lot. Activist neighbors fought to build a public place to bring the neighborhood together rather than to divide it. Finally, in 1991, the City of Toronto Department of Parks, Forestry and Recreation announced an international blueprint competition (Figure 7.).
Figure 7.
Village of Yorkville Park landscape schematic design (Anonymous, 2012a)
The customs wanted a park that reflected the scale and context of the neighborhood, incorporated the native environmental of the surrounding region, and made connections with the apportionment of local streets and a system of midblock passageways. The design strategy for the contest was to design the park to limited the Victorian style of collecting. In this case, "collecting" landscapes of Ontario -pine groves, prairies, marshes, orchards, alder woods, rock outcroppings and and then on -and arranging them in the pattern of the nineteenth century row houses.
The park design creates a series of linear subdivisions with contextual alignments to the building lot lines across the street and connections to mid-cake passageways in the bordering blocks. Each linear park segment is distinct in grapheme but related to the side by side, creating a park of diversity and unity. To anchor this infinite with an element of regional glacial geology, a large 700-ton bedrock outcrop of native Muskoka granite was taken apart forth natural crevices, moved 150 miles s, and reconstructed on site. Immense all the same inviting, the outcrop has a wonderful tactile surface for sitting and absorbs warmth on cool sunny days. Moveable tables and chairs adjacent to the bedrock offer a nice dissimilarity of permanence and flexibility (Effigy 8.).
Figure 8.
Village of Yorkville Park
The park has go a local landmark. While small in size, Yorkville's park has played an important role in the revitalization of the neighborhood since its completion in 1994. The neighborhood has connected its redevelopment with several new loftier-ascension buildings rising along the border or most the park. Recently, the park underwent some restoration work, only its original design integrity equally a distillation of regional environmental, forth with its role as a neighborhood connection point, remain as strong equally e'er. The park is owned and maintained by the City of Toronto Department of Parks, Forestry and Recreation. The Bloor-Yorkville Business Comeback Area takes an agile office in the management and programming of the park (Bearding, 2012a).
seven.2.four. Downsview Park
In 1999, the Parc Downsview Park announced an International Design Competition in endeavor to turn Downsview Park into an urban park, and potentially one of the largest ones in the globe, in which Bruce Mau Pattern, Rem Koolhaas, Oleson Worland, and Petra Blaisse submitted the winning design scheme, known as "Tree City." Parc Downsview Park has since come up up with a new plan to construct commercial and residential developments instead (Anonymous, 2012b). This 320-acre federal park will provide natural and formal garden environments, offering both passive and active recreation while promoting such themes as environmental sustainability, new ecologies, and the rich heritage of the site. Contributors to this volume clarify the entries of the competition finalists and consider a range of issues raised past the competition, including landscape architecture, geography, landscape ecology, and contemporary urbanism (Czerniac, 2002).
Downsview Park is designed to support ecology, social and economic sustainability. The vision for the park is the creation of a recreational space incorporating expansive open infinite areas, as well as the repurposing of an inventory of historic aviation-related buildings to create a twelvemonth-round setting (Effigy nine.). Downsview Park is a model development demonstrating sustainable practices in its pattern, structure, operation and maintenance. Information technology is intended to be a recreational, educational and cultural amenity for all Canadians (Figure x.); a various, healthy and livable community for its occupants, visitors and neighbors; and an educational demonstration project of international significance. In add-on to creating a unique park on the majority of the lands, portions of the holding will be developed to facilitate creating and maintaining Downsview Park. More than than $20 million has been spent to date on construction, improvements to infrastructure and renovations of older buildings. The investment that Downsview Park is making in the public realm volition have a significant impact well beyond its 231.5 hectares (572 acres) -task creation, increased real manor values, social and cultural appointment and numerous environmental benefits are all a direct issue of the work being performed in the cosmos of the Park (Bearding, 2012c).
Figure 9.
Downsview Park (Bearding, 2012b)
Figure 10.
Recreational, educational and cultural amenities in the Downsview Park (Anonymous, 2012d)
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Submitted: July 24th, 2012Reviewed: January 9th, 2013Published: July 1st, 2013
Open access peer-reviewed chapter
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