Ecological Design and Education 301all of us stand before the mystery that D. H. Lawrence called ‘the third thing’, by
which two atoms of H and one of O become water and no one knows what it is.
‘Form patterns’, Schwenk wrote, ‘such as those appearing in waves with new
water constantly flowing through them, picture on the one hand the creation of
form and on the other the constant exchange of material in the organic world’
(1996, p34). Water is a shaper, but the physics of its movement is also the elemen-
tary pattern of larger systems ‘depicting in miniature the great starry universe’
(1996, p45). Water is the medium by which and through which life is lived. Tur-
bulence in air and water have the same forms and mechanics as vortices whether in
the ocean, atmosphere or in space. Sound waves and waves in water operate simi-
larly. Schwenk’s great contribution to ecological design, in short, was to introduce
water in its fullness as a geologic, biological, somatic and spiritual force, a reminder
that we are creatures of water, all of us merely eddies in one great watershed.
The profession of design as a practical art probably begins with the great Brit-
ish and European landscapers such as Capability Brown (1716–1783) famous for
developing pastoral vistas for the rich and famous of his day. In our own history
the early beginnings of design as applied ecology are apparent in the work of the
great landscape architect and creator of Central Park in New York, Frederick Law
Olmsted and, later, in that of Jens Jensen, who pioneered the use of native plants in
landscape designs in the Midwest. Ian McHarg, a brilliant revolutionary, merged the
science of ecology with landscape architecture aiming to create human settlements in
which ‘man and nature are indivisible, and that survival and health are contingent
upon an understanding of nature and her processes’ (1969, p27) His students includ-
ing Pliny Fisk, Carol Franklin and Ann Whiston Spirn continued that vision armed
with sophisticated methodological tools of geographic information systems and eco-
logical modelling applicable to broader problems of human ecology.
While the degree of influence varied, many early efforts toward ecological
design were inspired by the arts and crafts movement in Britain, particularly the
work of William Morris and John Ruskin. In US architecture, for example, Frank
Lloyd Wright’s attempt to define an ‘organic architecture’ has clear resonance with
the work of Morris and Ruskin as well as the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Speaking before the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1939, Wright
described organic architecture as ‘architecture of nature, for nature ... something
more integral and consistent with the laws of nature’ (Wright, 1993, pp302, 306).
In words Morris and Ruskin would have applauded, Wright argued that a building
‘should love the ground on which it stands’ reflecting the topography, materials
and life of the place (1993, p307).
Organic architecture is ‘human scale in all proportions’, but is a blending of
nature with human created space so that it would be difficult to ‘say where the
garden ends and where the house begins ... for we are by nature ground-loving
animals, and insofar as we court the ground, know the ground, and sympathize
with what it has to give us’ (1993, p309). Wright’s vision extended beyond archi-
tecture to a vision of the larger settlement patterns that he called ‘Broadacre City’,
arguing that organic architecture had to be more than an island in a society with