Ecological Design (Architecture)
Related terms: bioclimatics, ecology, hyperobject, niche, sustainability.
‘Oekologie’ was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 to describe the relationship between the animal and its organic and inorganic environment. The word derives from the Greek oikos, meaning household, home, or dwelling. In everyday discourse, the term ‘ecology’ is often used to refer broadly to the environment, natural systems, or sustainability. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ecology refers both to the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings, and more broadly to “the study of the interaction of people with their environment” (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “ecology”).
The term ‘ecological design’ was coined by Sim van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan in their 1996 book of the same title, defined as: “any form of design that minimises environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes” (Van der Ryn and Cowan 1996, 18). Today, according to ecological design scholar Lydia Kallipoliti, the definition of the term is multifarious. In her Histories of Ecological Design: An Unfinished Cyclopedia, Kallipoliti summarizes the term’s various meanings to include: “the restitution of moral values in design thinking, to revive an archaic humanist discourse; the substitution of ‘performance’ for ‘function,’ in the hope of restoring a lost modernist and positivist ethos; the post-structuralist denunciation of environmental improvement; and the critical recognition of waste and pollution as generative potential for design” (Kallipoliti 2024, 19).
This entry will chart the term’s evolution and examine its relevance in architecture and design today, as critiques of terms such as sustainability make way for a renewed curiosity towards the potentials of ecological design today.
What follows is a genealogy that traces the path of ecological thinking across disciplines, from biology to design, arriving at the contemporary moment’s questioning of what ecological design is, or could be, today.
Ecology
In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin articulated his renowned theory of evolution, in which small changes in combination with environmental fitness resulted in evolutionary advancement. “Variations,” he wrote, “however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring” (Darwin 1859, 48). These physical conditions (climatic, material, parasites, predators…) are a mesh that is tied into the animal’s specifics and from which the animal cannot be separated.
Darwin’s theory of course emerged from earlier contributions to natural history. Theophrastus had described the traits of various plant species in relation to their surroundings: soil, moisture, and sunlight (Theophrastus, c. 350–287 BCE [1916]). Closer to his own time, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had proposed the Urplanze, an ideal plant that morphs in response to climatic difference (Von Goethe 1790, 6). Crucially, where Goethe’s responsive morphology was platonic, i.e. it had an ideal form, Darwin’s was unmotivated and without an original, only existing as an ongoing series of relationships between things.
This network, this set of relations between the animal and the environment, is what Ernst Haeckel, a few years after Darwin’s publication, would call Oekologie: “the comprehensive science of the relationships of the organism to its surrounding environment, where we can include, in the broader sense, all ‘conditions of existence’” (Haeckel 1866, 286).
An alternative definition proposed in 1892 by Ellen Swallow Richards might have tied the term to something closer to home (Clarke and Swallow 1973, 55). Richards proposed the term ‘human ecology’ to apply scientific principles to the domestic setting, hoping to promote good living conditions. But the British Medical Journal’s definition won out, in which ‘oekology’ was described as a branch of morphology and physiology based on the “exploitation of the endless phenomena of animal and plant life as they manifest themselves under natural conditions” (British Medical Journal 1873, 384).
In 1917, D’Arcy Thompson’s diagrams of variations of species through geometric transformations attempted to visually represent the relationship between the form and external forces in evolution. For example, in his “Evolution of Body Form” diagram, Thompson overlayed a grid on diagrams of two pairs of fish (Argyropelecus Olfersi/Sternoptyx diaphana, and Diodon/Orthagoricus) and deformed them to demonstrate how each might be a mathematical transformation of the other.
The grid, which represents the forces of deformation across species, suggested an underlying ordering system in the natural world. ‘Force,’ as understood by Thompson, was: “the appropriate term for our conception of the causes by which these forms and changes of form are brought about” (Thompson 1917, 11). However, while many environmental factors (gravity, energy, motion) were mentioned in the text and Thompson noted that transformations may depend on various phenomena, “from simple imbibition of water to the complicated results of the chemistry of nutrition,” environmental forces were not included in the representations (Thompson 1917, 10). In their invisibility, the very physical motivations of the deformations faded into insignificance.
Architectural Ecologies
In Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture, climatic and bodily variation are linked. By extension, perhaps, we might suggest that that stuff so frequently in between the two – architectural form – is also linked. While Vitruvius ultimately prioritized order and symmetry, his analogy opened an early precedent for considering architecture as a response to environmental variation (Vitruvius 1960 [1521], 170).
Moments of alignment between the fields have reappeared sporadically ever since. Following the taxonomic organizations of plant and animal species published by eighteenth century naturalists like Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, architects began classifying and publishing forms by type. Jean Nicolas Louis Durand and others proposed systematic methods for deriving architectural form from geometric rules. Here again, the focus on the object inevitably downplayed the environmental context that if implied, was never represented.
The 1830s witnessed yet another alignment. Inspired by Georges Cuvier, a group collectively known as the ‘Romantic Pensionnaires’ that included Félix Duban, Henri Labrouste, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, and Léon Vaudoyer rejected the architecture of the ancients that had been taught to them at the École de Beaux Arts in favor of forms that represented functional adaptation and uplifted new technologies. They preferred gothic architecture over classical styles, because they believed it was better aligned with nature. For Vaudoyer, the ribbed vaults of the gothic cathedral spoke of branching trees in the forest (Vaudoyer 1839, 336). Beyond analogy, this was a concerted effort to construct buildings with respect to the laws and logics of nature, going beyond the technical toward a more philosophical resonance with nature.
Louis Sullivan, in the late nineteenth century, circled back to nature again as an analogy for architecture as he argued for function over form:
Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work horse. The blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change, form does not change… (Sullivan 1896, 111).
In the mid-twentieth century, theorists and practitioners like Frederick Kiesler, Frank Lloyd Wright, and James Marston Fitch continued this lineage. Kiesler’s notion of correalism proposed a theory of mutual interaction between human and environment (Kiesler 1939, 61). Wright emphasised harmony with materials and site (Lloyd Wright 1939), and Fitch framed architecture as a third environment mediating between body and climate (Fitch 1948).
Beginning in the 1960s, ecological awareness gained broader cultural traction. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring drew awareness to environmental harm caused by pollution (Carson 2002). Arne Naess developed the concept of a “deep ecology,” in which all living beings were considered to be inherently equal in value (Naess 1973). Lydia Kallipoliti has written broadly on the emergence of this movement following the publication of photographs of Earth from the 1968 Apollo 8 mission. The view of the planet from space, she wrote, allowed the world to see itself as “a closed and ill-managed planet heading toward evolutionary bankruptcy, while arguing the modern science offered the most faithful account of civilizational values” (Kallipoliti 2024, 109).
The notion of design with the environment mushroomed under various titles: green, sustainable, bioclimatic, environmental. In 1963, Victor Olgyay published Design with Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism (Olgyay 1963), which linked architecture with technology, biology, and climatology and described methodologies for climate-responsive design. Figures like Ian McHarg, John McHale, Reyner Banham, and Buckminster Fuller promoted design that replicated nature and understood ecological design broadly: as planetary design as much as the design of an object or space. Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature (1969) presented a pioneering approach to landscape architecture and planning based on ecological principles, advocating for the integration of natural systems-geology, hydrology, and vegetation – into the design process to create more sustainable and resilient environments. Also in 1969, Reyner Banham published The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (Banham 1969), which argued for the inclusion of environmental systems into architecture proper and set the stage for a more technological modus operandi. John McHale’s The Future of the Future suggested that “humans had enlarged their ecological niche to include the whole planet” (McHale 1969, 17). McHale drew sectional diagrams from the Earth’s core to the sun to include the affected ecology in any object. From the inner earth to outer space, these “Superscale Survey” drawings zoomed out to consider how any act could affect multiple layers of the planet and beyond.
McHale’s next book, Ecological Context (McHale 1970), was a clearer manifesto for ecological design understood more holistically. McHale argued for adopting design as the solution for the complex problems of the planet. The implication for architecture and environmental humanities alike was profound: design though through the lens of the ecological context was never isolated but part of a vast, interrelated network of social, political, and ecological structures.
The 1990s brought critiques of environmental architecture which were accused of being nothing more than ‘greenwashing,’ i.e. the image of sustainability without the performance. Certifications like LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) came under attack for maintaining a status quo and enabling corporate values, rewarding shallow gestures rather than meaningful impact. Critics, including myself, saw sustainable hi-tech systems applied only after fundamental yet unsustainable moves had been made, as a “remedy” to the problems created by aesthetic choices (O’Donnell 2016, 590). Glass towers like Foster and Associates’ 30 St. Mary Axe (commonly known as The Gherkin) garnered criticism for labelling themselves ‘sustainable’ while many of the systems were in fact countering aesthetic design choices: e.g. fritted glass limiting heat gain in windows when the choice of glass itself was a fundamentally unsustainable choice in many ways. Jonathan Massey pointed out that if the operable windows of the building were not used, “30 St. Mary Axe is not a green tower but an energy hog.” He continued: “It is striking, then, that the building has been a critical and financial success despite its failure to realize one of the headline claims made about its design” (Massey 2014, 17). Similarly, Michelle Addington criticised the tautological logic of ‘smart facades,’ claiming that they solved problems created by design choices themselves (Addington 2015, 60). In the 1990s, it seemed to many that, despite the best intentions, ecological design had been co-opted by capitalist systems and aesthetic priorities.
At the same time – and independently, since the branches of theory and sustainability had become disconnected – digital architecture was embracing evolutionary processes. Greg Lynn’s “Embryological Houses” used terms like ‘broods’ and ‘species’ (Lynn 2003) to describe adaptive and responsive architectural form. Lynn argued for an architecture that, in its design process, was less understood as an isolated object and more considered as being in dialogue with forces that shape it from the exterior. He proposed that “the spatial organism” was no longer understood as static and independent of external forces, but rather as a sensibility continuously transforming through its internalisation of outside events” (Lynn 2003, 39). Invoking D’Arcy Thompson’s transformative diagrams, however, Lynn propagated the same omission that had befallen Thompson: he suppressed the role of context in the representation of iterative design. While both authors mentioned external forces and cited examples in the texts, neither the forces nor their causations appeared as a component of the representations, and they remained, for the most part, invisible. As a result, while digital design exploded at the turn of the twenty-first century, the ideas of evolutionary thinking that went alongside it were rather one-sided: the ‘organism’ (the design object) evolved, but the forces motivating that evolution remained unrepresented and neglected, entirely separate from the organism affected.
As the new millennium approached, theorists and philosophers began to engage questions of nature, agency, and structure. The term ‘Anthropocene’ came to define a new period in which human transformation of the planet was era-defining. Deleuze and Guattari's book A Thousand Plateaus introduced the concept of the “rhizome” to describe non-hierarchical, interconnected networks: “connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles” (Deleuze and Guattari 1980, 7). More recently, Timothy Morton defined the term ‘hyperobject’ as “objects (that) entangle one another in a crisscrossing mesh of spacetime fluctuations” (Morton 2013, 28).
In an evolution from the critiqued glass towers of the 1990s, contemporary architecture has shifted away from the language of ‘sustainability,’ which favors the technical aspect of the approach, towards the term ‘ecological,’ which aims to shift away from pragmatic problem-solving toward the consideration of the building as an agent within a broader ecosystem, including not just environmental but also social, cultural, and temporal dimensions.
Likewise in architecture, in a shift from the much-maligned glass towers of the 1990s, contemporary architecture has moved away from the language of ‘sustainability,’ which favored a technical approach, towards the term ‘ecological.’ This linguistic turn denotes a move away from a pragmatic and technical problem-solving mode toward the consideration of the building as an agent within a broader ecosystem, including not just environmental but also social, cultural, and temporal dimensions.
Such projects are an important push back on the possibility that ecological design might be reduced to a checklist. Yet, despite its evolution, contemporary ecological architecture has yet to fully develop itself as a language or means of expression that promotes ideas about interconnectedness. That is to say, beyond being ecological, how can a building communicate its ecology? In other words and at the risk of oversimplification: what does architecture that genuinely prioritizes ecological design look like?
French critic Frédéric Migayrou has argued that “ecology as a science is based on the negation of all things natural” (Migayrou 2003, 22). If indeed ecological design operates in a world where nature is constructed, can ecological design can ever be truly sustainable? Or is it doomed to remain trapped in a world of hopeful fiction?
For Lydia Kallipoliti, ecology within the discipline of architecture emerges in a more positive light. Ecological design, she argues, is “not a case of burdensome maintenance, but one of care; a means of apprehending the world via the raw, visceral nature of beings entangled in planetary climates” (Kallipoliti 2024, 21). Referencing feminist thinker Maria Puig De la Bellacasa, Kallipoliti uplifts the idea that care, as an ethical framework, may “challenge dominant systems and ideologies through the dimensions of affection, sensitivity and physical work,” so that architects and designers could operate “within the built world as if it were an ecosystem” (Puig De la Bellacasa 2017, 3). In this view, ecological design is not simply the application of scientific knowledge to material practice but a way of dwelling critically, carefully, and responsibly in the world. Perhaps, satisfyingly, this most recent way of understanding ecological design is a return to Ellen Swallow’s original definition of the term as something much more intimate and caring: something akin to good living, or living good.
References
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