00251 Design methods

You need to make a series of decisions to build something. Design is about making these decisions. If made consciously and purposefully, they can help you solve a specific problem. If not, they still happen, but without a focus and end up clashing with each other. Design is inevitable. It is better to do it consciously than just let it happen. — Abhijit Nadgouda (software engineer)

Permaculture Basics Thus Far:

Five steps to the design process:

  • Observe,
  • Study and Evaluate,
  • Design,
  • Implement

Four aspects of design:

  • Technique — how we do something.
  • Strategies — Adds time to technique, so that we use strategies to achieve future goals. It has a value orientation (some things are better than others so we encourage the good and discourage or eliminate the bad).
  • Materials — things we make things with. This includes energy.
  • Assemblies — the combination of elements to make more complex structures. Assemblies can include invisible structures (see section 1 for details on invisible structures). A grocery coop plus farmers market plus balcony herb and salad green garden plus home worm compost bin equals a more sustainable urban food system.

Each design has four components:

  • Site (your life and its geographies),
  • Energy,
  • Abstract,
  • Social

Seven important design concepts:

  • Self-regulation
  • Sources of work and pollution
  • Resources as energy storages
  • Entropy
  • Chaos and disorder
  • Succession
  • Guilds

Methods are a way of doing design that follows specific steps. We are all familiar with this process when it comes to recipes. What we need are a series of recipes for sustainable living. That is what iPermie is about. Our approach is to pile up information about you, your situation, your goals, and where you want to go. Then we systematically figure out how you will get there. Since there are multiple goals at play, there are many things that need to be done and journeys that need to be accomplished.

Methods are ways of working on a “design recipe.” They suggest a sequence of steps. There isn't one universal method that works for all people in all situations. We play with a variety of methods to achieve our design goals. Sometimes we use one, sometimes we use them all. This isn't all of the possible methods. It is a compilation of some of the most used methods.

This is why it's always useful to pay attention to how you go about solving problems in permaculture so you can share that knowledge with others. You may find a similar issue some time in the future. Why reinvent a way to resolve it? You can share your experience with others so that they can benefit from your experiences. We need a book of recipes for more sustainable living and everyone has something to contribute to that.

While every permaculture design depends on its context, it is not necessary for everyone to reinvent the tire. Equally important, there is no need for anyone to reinvent the flat tire.

Even though we go through a reductionist process of identifying concepts like five steps, four aspects, four components, and now ten design methods, permaculture is a holistic process. None of these topics are discrete and exclusive categories. They are maps, and thus they are not the territory. They remain useful to us as guides.

Consider them the trees of a forest of design. There are roots of design, rhizomes of design, climbing vines of design, herbs of design, and so on and so forth. At any given time, you may have several different methods at play in your design work.

The forest of design, as the sum of all its components, is something greater than the actual addition of all the components.

Ten Design Methods

Doing design — and learning permaculture — is a matter of continually drilling down into the information until you get to “very fine details.” No one ever depends on only one of these methods and these aren’t the only methods. Good design, at one time or another, may use all of these to achieve its goals.

Analysis lists the characteristics of components of the site (which could be your life), a situation, or system. This is where we use tools like lists, spreadsheets, needs and yields charts. Make lists of the activities related to the goals and functions you came up with during your observations. Continue to work on those lists until each one is a comprehensive and holistic look at the topic. Compare lists and look for beneficial connections — the more connections, the more desirable the combination, whatever it may be. You could put this information into a database and carefully assign key words. This allows you to sort your lists to find common links.

Observation designs through careful observation of the situation, lifestyle site, or system. This is essential to all design and shows the holistic nature of the discipline. What do you do? Where do you do it? How do you do life your life? What is necessary for the activities of your life?

When we adopt/manipulate patterns from nature for our permaculture design, we use deduction from nature. If we want to distribute goods within a community, we set up a distribution network. It might look like a stream with branches. We like patterns we observe in nature. They evolved over the eons because they are useful and practical.

Sometimes we pile up a collection of options and make decisions among them. This is options and decisions design. You could write each option on a sticky note and put it on a white board divided into categories or functions and move things around to see how they look in different combinations. Assign colors to functions and put dots on sticky notes. This can help you visualize stacked functions and redundant systems. The sticky notes with the most dots are your best design bets.

One common technique is to develop map overlays to “try out” ideas before actually implementing them. This is known as data overlay. This is particularly useful in permaculture lifestyle design when working on the geographies of your life (the relationship among the necessary locations for work, school, residence, entertainment, community, arts, religion, etc.)

Some may think this whimsical, but another design approach is to look at random arrangements of the elements of the design, to see how things may look and interact. This is design by random assembly. Sometimes unexpected connections and practical ideas emerge from this kind of random design work. One way to do this is to write each element or function or system on a card. Shuffle them and divide into two or three stacks. Take one card from each stack and look at the three of them together. Or do two cards at a time. If something seems promising set them aside and take the next two or three. If nothing strikes you about the two or three cards you drew, shuffle them back into your stack. Don’t be in a hurry. This kind of design work takes time. It can be fun to do in a group. Invite friends and use this as party game. Other eyes may see things you don’t.

Designs for work situations, such as for kitchens and other building interiors, or for systems that produce a certain result, need flow diagrams, showing how the work flows and the components interact.

Zone and sector analysis develops provides information for design based on the locations and geographies of the activities and functions of the lifestyle (or the site, situation, or system), based on the expected uses of the items at the site and the impact on your life (or the site, situation, or system) of off-site energies.

Make models. If you need to design a building, or a neighborhood, get some cardboard and scraps of wood and build a model. Get others involved if you doubt your model-making abilities. Models are like maps or diagrams, only they are in three dimensions. Make your mistakes during the model phase. Don't save your mistakes for the actual construction sequence. Models also work for invisible structure issues, only then we refer to what we do as “role playing.” While the results are not as certain as making a model of a building or neighborhood, it will be useful nevertheless.

We use Testing Questions to judge our design ideas. Testing questions can include ethics, principles, and practical issues. 00381 has examples of testing questions. As your experience develops, and you learn more about yourself, you will probably develop your own set of testing questions to add to these that grows from your own personal experiences.

While this discussion doesn't exhaust all the possibilities for methods of permaculture design, it is a good start!