The Routledge Companion to Ecological Design Thinking

Healthful Ecotopian Visions for Architecture and Urbanism

Mitra Kanaani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032023892
• eBook ISBN: 9781000629316
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This companion investigates the ways in which designers, architects, and planners address ecology through the built environment by integrating ecological ideas and ecological thinking into discussions of urbanism, society, culture, and design.

Exploring the innovation of materials, habitats, landscapes, and infrastructures, it furthers novel ecotopian ideas and ways of living, including human-made settings on water, in outer space, and in extreme environments and climatic conditions. Chapters of this extensive collection on ecotopian design are grouped under five different ecological perspectives: design manifestos and ecological theories, anthropocentric transformative design concepts, design connectivity, climatic design, and social design. Contributors provide plausible, sustainable design ideas that promote resiliency, health, and well-being for all living things, while taking our changing lifestyles into consideration. This volume encourages creative thinking in the face of ongoing environmental damage, with a view to making design decisions in the interest of the planet and its inhabitants.

With contributions from over 79 expert practitioners, educators, scientists, researchers, and theoreticians, as well as planners, architects, and engineers from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, this book engages theory, history, technology, engineering, and science, as well as the human aspects of ecotopian design thinking and its implications for the outlook of the planet.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Ecological Perspective Domain One: Design Manifestos and Theories in Ecological Domains—Symbiotic Trajectories Between Ecological Organisms and Creative Design Thinking: Critical Design Idealisms on Ecotopian Design Trajectories in Bio-Socio-Techno Integrative Processes
• Ecological Perspective Domain Two: Anthropocentric Transformative Design Concepts—Anthropocentric Non-Utilitarian Economics of Wellbeing and Resilience: Habitat, Community, Human Settlements, Movement, Transportation, and Diaspora, as Socio-Organisms for Livability
• Ecological Perspective Domain Three: The Design Connectivity Domain—Design Hybridity and Performativity in Non-Utilitarian/Utilitarianist Approaches and Views Toward Eco-Centric Environmental Behavior Transactions: Materiality, Biodiversity, Biomimetics, Energy Resiliency, and the Role of Technology
• Ecological Perspective Domain Four: The Climatic Design Domain—Methodologists’ Epistemological Views of Ecological Design: Ecosystem Climatic Organisms and Actions; Utilizing Elements of Water, Air/Space, and Soil/Land as Concepts, Opportunities, and Challenges for Design Thinking
• Ecological Perspective Domain Five: The Social Design Domain—The Domain of Social Ecology in Using Design Tools: Equity, Diversity, Embodiment, Sustenance, Health, and Human Resiliency in Design Practices as Design Concepts
• Epilogue: Architects, Artilects and Climate Change
• Contributors’ Bios
• Index