Page 027 - INTEGRATIVE DESIGN MEETS THE REAL WORLD
Source section: Section 2 - Sustainable Thinking PDF page: 27 Guide page: 20 OCR quality: high (425 words)
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INTEGRATIVE DESIGN MEETS THE REAL WORLD In the article “Integrated Design Meets the Real World,” the authors note that users of an integrated approach “… got better at the process over time, especially when they were able to work with the same team members more than once. Once they’d gone through the process, they found it valuable, and many couldn’t imagine doing design any other way.” This section addresses problem-solving approaches that can be applied throughout the green building process. Subsequent sections will explore how green building professionals can begin to incorporate these ideas into projects and professional pursuits. SYSTEMS THINKING Sustainability involves designing and operating systems to survive and thrive over time. To understand sustainable systems, we must further understand what we mean by systems. Asystem is an assemblage of elements or parts that interact in a series of relationships to form a complex whole that serves particular functions or purposes. The theory behind systems thinking has had a profound effect on many fields of study, such as computer science, business, psychology, and ecology. Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, pioneers in the study of systems and sustainability, describe this discipline in their book The Limits to Growth. Asystem can be physically small (an ant hill) or large (the entire universe), simple and self-contained (bacteria ina Petri dish) or complex and interacting with other systems (the global trading system or a forest ecosystem). Systems rarely exist in isolation; even the bacteria in the Petri dish are affected by the light and temperature of the laboratory. The boundaries of a system depend on what we are looking at, and most systems are actually systems within systems. For example, the human body is made up of many interlinking internal systems, such as the musculoskeletal system, which interact with external systems, such as the = natural environment. fe) E a w S Our training taught us to see the world as a set of unfolding behavior patterns z such as growth, decline, oscillation, overshoot. It has taught us to focus not so I much on single pieces of a system, as on connections. We see the elements s of demography, economy, and the environment as one planetary system, with a innumerable interconnections. We see stocks and flows and feedbacks and a interconnections, all of which influence the way the system will behave in the 4 future and influence the actions we might take to change its behavior.” 8 Ww 6 0 14 A. Wendt and N. Malin, Integrated Design Meets the Real World, Environmental Building News 19(5) (2010), a buildinggreen.com/articles/issueTOC.cfm?Volume=19&lssue=5. w 15 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens Ill. (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York: = Universe Books. 20