The scientific foundation of ecological design is a profound understanding of the biota, processes, and dynamics of the natural world. Advanced societies need to be re-integrated into the natural world. Human intelligence and ingenuity is a junior partner in the three-and-a-half billion years of evolutionary intelligence that created and maintains life on Earth. Food is at the heart of the issue of how we live on this earth, including both what we eat and what we do with our waste. John and Nancy Jack Todd are two of the finest ecological designers on both the micro and macro levels, working to create new ways of dealing with human wastes by creating contained eco-systems they call Living Machines. They have proven that waste water not only can become clean and clear, but also can grow profitable fish, vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers. They have used similar contained ecosystems to restore disrupted processes in natural bodies of water.
The Todds' path is through ecological design, an emerging science and practice that is developing the knowledge and the means for humanity to live sustainably over long reaches of time. In this workshop we'll explore the history, concept, practice, and implications of ecological design. Expect to gain a fundamental understanding of how we can design in harmony with natural systems to restore damaged ecosystems and create more benign technologies and infrastructures. Hopefully, in the course of the workshop, people will experience an epiphany as they grasp the potential for adapting our lives to greater balance with the planet.
John Todd, an internationally recognized biologist, is the author of over two hundred technical and popular articles on biology and planetary stewardship and is a professor at the University of Vermont. Nancy Jack Todd has edited the excellent journal Annals of Earth, an intellectual forum for the presentation of leading-edge environmental thought, for 18 years. They have written The Village as Solar Ecology, Tomorrow is Our Permanent Address, Re-inhabiting Cities & Towns: Designing for Sustainability, and From Eco-cities to Living Machines. In 1969 they co-founded the New Alchemy Institute to create a science and practice based upon ecological precepts; in 1980 they co-founded Ocean Arks International to purify the waters of the earth, develop strategies for living more lightly on the planet, and foster the emergence of a lasting planetary culture.