Ecology and Design
Frameworks For Learning
Professionals, faculty, and students are aware of the pressing need to integrate ecological principles into environmental design and planning education, but few materials exist to facilitate that development.
Ecology and Design addresses that shortcoming by articulating priorities and approaches for incorporating ecological principles in the teaching of landscape design and planning. The book explains why landscape architecture and design and planning faculty should include ecology as a standard part of their courses and curricula, provides insights on how that can be done, and offers models from successful programs. The book:
- examines the need for change in the education and practice of landscape architecture and in the physical planning and design professions as a whole
- asks what designers and physical planners need to know about ecology and what applied ecologists can learn from design and planning
- develops conceptual frameworks needed to realize an ecologically based approach to design and planning
- offers recommendations for the integration of ecology within a landscape architecture curriculum, as an example for other design fields such as civil engineering and architecture
- considers the implications for professional practice
- explores innovative approaches to collaboration among designers and ecologists
In addition to the editors, contributors include Carolyn Adams, Jack Ahern, Richard T. T. Forman, Michael Hough, James Karr, Joan Iverson Nassauer, David Orr, Kathy Poole, H. Ronald Pulliam, Anne Whiston Spirn, Sandra Steingraber, Carl Steinitz, Ken Tamminga, and William Wenk. Ecology and Design represents an important guidepost and source of ideas for faculty, students, and professionals in landscape architecture, urban design, planning and architecture, landscape ecology, conservation biology and restoration ecology, civil and environmental engineering, and related fields.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction: Toward Landscape Realism
Chapter 2. The Authority of Nature: Conflict, Confusion, and Renewal in Design, Planning, and Ecology
Chapter 3. Ecology's New Paradigm: What Does It Offer Designers and Planners?
Chapter 4. The Missing Catalyst: Design and Planning with Ecology Roots
Chapter 5. Lead or Fade into Obscurity: Can Landscape Educators Ask and Answer Useful Questions about Ecology?
Chapter 6. What from Ecology Is Relevant to Design and Planning
Chapter 7. Toward an Inclusive Concept of Infrastructure
Chapter 8. Human Health and Design: An Essay in Two Parts
One. Exquisite Communion: The Body, Landscape, and Toxic Exposures
Two. Design and Planning as Healing Arts: The Broader Context of Health and Environment
Chapter 9. Ecological Sciences and Landscape Design: A Necessary Relationship in Changing Landscapes
Chapter 10. On Teaching Ecological Principles to Designers
Chapter 11. Looking Beneath the Surface: Teaching a Landscape Ethic
Chapter 12. In Expectation of Relationships: Centering Theories around Ecological Understanding
Chapter 13. The Nature of Dialogue and the Dialogue of Nature: Designers and Ecologists in Collaboration
Chapter 14. Interweaving Ecology in Design and Planning Curricula
Chapter 15. Integrating Ecology "across" the Curriculum of Landscape Architecture
Chapter 16. Building Ecological Understandings in Design Studio: A Repertoire for a Well-Crafted Learning Experience
Chapter 17. From Theory to Practice: Educational Outcomes in the World of Professional Practice
Chapter 18. Conclusions: Frameworks for Learning
List of Contributors
Index
You may purchase this title at fine bookstores across the United States. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.



