00381 Design Process

Evaluate your lists and charts.

Mollison wrote:

RESOURCES are practical and useful energy storages, while INFORMATION is only a potential resource, until it is put to use.

Information is fine and important and we must have it. Besides information, we need the connections that link that information into an integrated whole. Look for beneficial connections — those that exist already and connections you can make in the future by design.

At this point you have some lists of goals and the necessary functions for your life. You have some lists of activities associated with those goals and functions.

Are all of these goals and functions equal? Not likely. Your goals, activities, and functions need to be prioritized. What are the most important goals you want for your life? What are the most critical functions? Always start with the most important and critical.

After establishing priorities, look through the lists of activities and decide which activities need an actual place to happen and which don’t need an actual space.

For example, you probably listed “eating” as one of the necessary functions in your life. Eating at least implies cooking and cooking suggests a kitchen, so that’s something that needs a place.

A goal like “develop more loving relationships” is not place-bound. It can be realized anywhere.

You will use this information as you continue to drill down and become more specific and begin to make design decisions.

Patterns

What patterns do you find in your life and community? How do these patterns interact and relate to and with each other? If you contemplate changes in your life, what patterns do you need to support those changes? You may need lists of patterns that you observe and an evaluation of how they connect and interact with each other

Zones and Sectors

Evaluate your functions and activities requiring places and your geographies to determine how everything locates relative to everything else in your life. If those relationships and locations are not optimum, what needs to happen to optimize them? Examine the sectors to determine the impact of the energies on the systems of your life and community and to decide what you need in the way of collectors, deflectors, and shields that will manage those energies.

Evaluate the zones of your life and all of its sites and geographies. The purpose of this evaluation is to decide about the appropriate placement of elements and geographies of your life.

Evaluate the sectors. What energies impact you and from where? What is useful, what needs to be redirected for more beneficial uses, and what should be blocked in self-protection?

Problems and Hazards

What specific problems did you discover during the observation phase? What are the potential solutions, appropriate to the scale of your lifestyle, to those problems? What would be involved in harnessing the energy and resources that entropy sends through your life before they are entirely dissipated? Since it is hard — if not impossible — to do just one thing, what other impacts/consequences (intended or unintended) will there be on your life by these changes?

The goal is always a holistic evaluation of the entire situation so that design recommendations can be determined and implemented. Don’t be afraid to use your intuition and follow hunches. It’s OK to trust yourself. Examine facts and details carefully. Don't neglect your inner vision! It is of equal importance to the facts on the ground. If something doesn’t “feel” right, keep looking and designing until it does.

Testing Questions.

These are questions we ask, again and again, during our design work. Their purpose is to help us make decisions among the alternatives available to us. The use of testing questions is not a discrete phase. It is something that happens throughout the process.

• How does this care for the planet?
• How does this care for people?
• How does this have a care for the future?
• How does this connect to other elements in the system?
• How do I maximize the beneficial connections within the various elements of my personal lifestyle?
• How many ways can I meet this important need?
• How many functions can stack on this element or function?
• Do the energy patterns in the situation work for me or against me?
• What is the least change I can make for the greatest effect?
• What are the first things that need to be done in this situation? The second? Third? Fourth? Etc.

When it comes to various things (including systems) in your life, we ask questions like —

• Where do we put this item or system or structure?
• How can it be placed for maximum benefit?
• What beneficial connections exist between this and everything else in my life?

In more detail . . .

• What functions does it serve?
• How are those functions connected with other elements of the design?
• Can additional functions be stacked here?
• Does this harm anyone or anything?
• Where does this go?
• What does entropy do in this situation? How can I use that to the advantage of this system?

Other questions:

• Does this demonstrate solidarity?
• Is there a cooperative way to accomplish this goal?
• Can I find this locally?
• How much can this system productively manage (resources and energy)?
• How many reasons are there for doing this? (How many functions belong to this element?)
• How can I do this with less fossil fuel energy? Do I need to do this at all?
• What are the unintended consequences of this action?

The Spiral of Intervention

If we are in problem-solving mode, the first question is: What happens if I do nothing? Will this just go away if I leave it alone? Is it OK to ignore it? Will it get worse? Or will it simply be manageable as it is without further intervention?

If we decide we have to do something, we ask — can I increase my productivity to compensate for the losses caused by this problem?

If not, we ask — is there a biological intervention that will fix the problem?

If not, we ask — is there a mechanical solution to the problem?

If not, we ask (as a last resort) — is there a chemical solution to the problem? If we think we need this option, we need to ask and answer a further question — what are the unintended consequences of using a chemical solution? And, what is the least toxic form of chemical intervention that will work?

This is known as the Spiral of Intervention and our goal is to always avoid the final chemical option, since there are so many possible unintended consequences of applying chemicals in the environment.

Design is about taking all these seemingly disparate elements and working with them to create a beneficial system that cares for the planet, cares for the people, and cares for the future.

Five Categories of Resources Available for Design

If we have need to satisfy with resources, the decision hierarchy looks something like this:

Resources which increase by modest use. A cut and come again plant like chard. When you use a bit, it grows more. A coppiced tree and a pasture are more examples of this, as is friendship.

Resources unaffected by use. Many people can look at a beautiful view of the landscape, without diminishing the view. Water in a flowing stream used to power a turbine or mill is not affected by using it to run the equipment.

Resources which disappear or degrade if not used. If you don't harvest the garden, the vegetables rot and compost in place.

If no resources are available from these first three categories, we turn to the final two.

Resources which reduced by use. Fossil fuels are an example of this.

Resources which pollute or destroy if used. Fossil fuels are another example, as are herbicides and pesticides. These resources must be used as sparingly as possible and should be avoided as much as possible. A primary goal of all permaculture design must be to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Design Methods

00251 has a discussion of ten methods of design common in permaculture design. This is where we bring these into play:

• Analysis
• Observation
• Deduction from nature
• Options and decisions design
• Data overlay
• Random assembly
• Flow diagrams
• Zone and sector analysis
• Testing Questions
• Model making and role playing

Design Areas Needing Decisions.

Always start with the goals that you are most passionate about, the most critical of the necessary functions, and the worst problems that need to be resolved. The following list is a comprehensive look at necessary design areas. Think of these as chapters in your plan. Add additional chapters as necessary.

• Food
• Water
• Energy, stuff, resource cycling
• Shelter
• Invisible structures (government, social and economic systems, culture)
• Access/transportation
• Community
• Economics
• Resilience/hazards
• Health
• Education

Suppose you are in a water design process and you observe rain falling on the roof. You want to use it to water your vegetable garden and fruit trees.

What principles and strategies and tactics are helpful in resolving the situation?

What systems/techniques will you need to get the rain from the sky into your garden?

How does your rainwater system interact with other systems on your property?

What connections does it have to other functions on the home place? (More connections = more resilience = more conservation of energy and work.)

Does it do just one thing, or can additional functions be stacked on it?

If it is an important function, is it safe to have only one system to do that, whatever it may be?

Or is there some redundancy that should be designed into the system?

Since cooking food is an essential function, you need more than one way to cook so that “many elements will support essential functions.” This could mean — a regular kitchen stove, a solar oven, an outdoor bread oven, a propane camp stove, a wood burning stove, etc., all of which can be used for cooking.

Are there other functions that these five cooking elements can provide? E.g., in the winter, the indoor cooking elements can provide heat to keep the interior comfortable.

A wood-burning stove provides heat, can be used to cook, and the end product is wood ash, which is a useful garden fertilizer.

The garden produces food which may be cooked on the wood stove, creating wood ash, that helps grow more vegetables, and so on and so forth that cycle goes.

Are there any particular problems associated with these five cooking elements? Do any of these problems contain their own solution? The heat created by the indoor cooking elements may be welcome in the winter. It won’t be so useful in the summer. In fact, cooking inside will cause you to spend more BTUs which cost money and deplete resources to remove the extra heat and humidity created by the indoor cooking elements. Do you want to move the cooking outside during the hot months? Is there a place to cook outside? And/or eat fewer cooked foods, more salads, sandwiches, etc.? The outdoor bread oven is a great summer cooking element, and produces ash which can be used as fertilizer.

At the beginning of the design, you may not have all the details you will eventually need. That’s just fine for now. You don’t need to know the exact size of a water tank to know that you need something to catch the rain falling on your roof and divert it to storage so you can use it to water your garden and maybe even take a shower. It is enough to know that getting the rain from the roof to the garden and the shower is an issue that requires a system to resolve it.

Your design analysis doesn’t stop there. You take a shower in the water, getting a yield out of it, and you observe the water flowing into the drain — which includes nutrients from the soaps and bits and pieces of dried skin, hair, etc. — and you see entropy draining all that energy and resource into the sink of the city’s sewer system, so you know that you need another "something" to do "something" with the grey water.

You keep on drilling deeper and becoming more specific. Down the line your design work proceeds, all the way until the last drop of rainwater has soaked into the ground and into the realm of the micro flora and micro fauna and worms or evaporated into the air, or whatever the uses are at the end of the chain of events that begins with a drop of rainfall hitting your roof.

Always look for connections between systems that reinforce the necessary activities, make them more efficient, resilient, and conservative of resources and energy.

Always look for multiple elements to support essential functions.

Always look for opportunities to stack functions.

Always look for biological solutions.

Always examine a problem and seek the solution that may lurk within the problem itself.

Always conserve energy and resources.

Always try to create mutually reinforcing situations (feedback loops).

Always work at a scale appropriate to your life.

Always look not only at the parts. Always see the whole. There is a forest and there are the trees. Individual trees are not the forest, yet the forest does not exist without the trees. The danger is that we see the trees and ignore the forest. Seeing the world and your life as a whole system is not easy. It can be learned, with practice, just like anything else.

Don’t forget to count the cost in money and materials and time! Live within your budget — your finances, your access to energy, your time. Don’t bankrupt your bank account, your time, or the planet for the sake of your design.

As your design progresses, so does the level of detail.

At the beginning, all you needed to know was that you needed a rainwater harvesting system to provide water for your garden. Before you finish, you will need to know how many gallons you plan to store in how many tanks located at specific places on your property. You will need to know how they connect to each other and what happens if it rains when the tanks are full. As your design progresses, you constantly drill down further to new levels of detail until you know everything you need to know about the design and its various decisions.

Most important design principles:

• Many elements support every function.
• Every element should serve many functions.
• Everything is connected.

Five Steps in the Design Process (OSEDI):

• Observe
• Study and Evaluate
• Design
• Implement

Four aspects of design:

• Techniques,
• Strategies,
• Materials,
• Assemblies

Four components of design:

Site — your life and its geographies, water, earth, landscape and plants, climate, geography, housing, work, education, stuff

Energy — technologies, structures, sources, connections

Abstract — timing, data, ethics

Social — legal aids, Invisible structures, people, culture, trade and finance

Eleven important design concepts:

• Self-regulation and Feedback
• Sources of work and pollution
• Resources as energy storages
• Entropy and Affinity
• Chaos and disorder
• Diversity
• Appropriate Scale
• Type 1 errors
• Zones
• Sectors
• Patterns

Self-regulation and Feedback. We like it. We want more of it. Getting there is difficult and takes time.

Sources of work and pollution. Bad design causes work and pollution. We always design to eliminate unnecessary work and pollution.

Resources as energy storages. We like them and we want and need more of them.

Entropy. This is everywhere and we counter it with affinity.

Chaos and disorder. Look for sinks and eliminate or regulate them. Only bring in that which can be actually used. Harmony and cooperation help.

Diversity. This refers to a diversity of beneficial connections

Appropriate Scale. An element, system, action, or technology appropriate to a situation in its complete context.

Affinity. Draws us together. Gravity is an affinity process, as is the hydrological cycle.

Type 1 errors. Anything that creates more work, expense, and hassle than it is worth and/or puts you or others at risk of hazard and harm.

Zones. A place for everything and everything in its place, properly located to conserve energy.

Sectors. Wild off-site energies that flow onto the site and into your life.

Patterns in permaculture design:

Everything in nature follows patterns and so does our world of technology, work, and supply.

Patterns result when events set in motion the evolution of forms.

Patterns observed in nature are good models for human designs (waves, nets, lobes, spirals, streamlines, clouds, branches, scatters).

Landscapes and cities are patterns of patterns. Patterns show expansion and contraction.

Energy follows the patterns set for it.

Boundaries (between/among patterns) are places where events happen. Creating complex boundary conditions is a basic design strategy.

Create boundary conditions that maximize edge. Use differences as a strategy to build resources. Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use or value them creatively.

There are no new orders of events, just a discovery of existing events. Every event we can detect is a result of a preceding event, and gives rise to subsequent events.

Timing shapes events. Timing plus patterns yields shapes.

When patterns intersect with each other — like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle — we refer to this as tessellation.

When patterns nestle within each other — like bowls stacked on a shelf, one inside the other — we know this as annidation.

When patterns lay over each other — such as a flower petal pattern — this is superimposition.

TEN DESIGN METHODS

• Analysis
• Observation
• Deduction from nature.
• Options and decisions design.
• Data overlay.
• Random assembly.
• Flow diagrams
• Zone and sector analysis
• Testing questions
• Making models and role playing