SBSE Retreat 2006
Integral Sustainable Design:
Re-integrating what modernism differentiated and post-modernism dissociated.

 

Program Coordinators:
Mark DeKay, University of Tennessee      Mary Guzowski, University of Minnesota
mdekay@utk.edu                                               guzow001@umn.edu                        

Retreat Theme

 The theme of this retreat responds to two observations:

1. Each year SBSE members are better at telling the story and methods of sustainable design, yet, in all honesty, we are still a largely ineffective; and

2. SBSE (and architectural education in general) seems to have no collective framework for navigating and transcending the fragmented pluralism that entrenches our schools, locks intellectual camps into epic battles, and confounds our students.

Can we discover a meta-theory of sustainable technology? How do we make sense of the multiple understandings of technology– for instance, can we reconcile Cris Benton’s love of measuring all things measurable, Marietta Millet’s fascination with the experiential quality of light, Lance’s Lavine’s cry in the wilderness (a song of rich symbolic meaning), and the complex building-as–a-whole-systems logic of John Reynolds?

What if the green-sustainable-eco-techno box in which SBSEers think is part of the problem? What if we are leaving out important perspectives or missing a big part of the picture that could help us move education and the design professions up the evolutionary ladder to a stage where we all could spontaneously care about nature and act accordingly? Are we approaching Elgin’s “evolutionary inflection point,” and if so, how do we elegantly make the transition?

One emerging theory base that may be helpful is Integral Theory, which begins with the assumption that everyone is right - at least partially - and seeks to fashion an intellectual framework that both transcends and includes differences. Simply put, an integrally-informed approach challenges us to hold "multiple, simultaneous perspectives" and to address the spectrum and process of human development.  For the Retreat we will expand our perspectives as design educators to understand how multiple, simultaneous perspectives can help us open new ways to teach and learn in response to the ecological challenges of the 21^st century.

Quadrants. The multiple perspectives are based on two fundamental distinctions, objective vs. subjective knowledge, and collective meaning vs. individual experience. Imagine a matrix with four quadrants (see top diagram): in the upper left (UL) we find individual experience and subjective knowledge; in the upper right (UR) is individual phenomena and objective knowledge; in the lower right (LR) is collective meaning and subjective knowledge; and finally in the lower right (LR) we have collective phenomena with objective knowledge. Each quadrant represents a unique and fundamental perspective on anything to which we can turn our attention. In the same order, we might associate each of these perspectives on design, in greatly simplified form, as follows (see lower diagram):

UL = Self (individual experience)                                
UR =Science (mechanics and performance)
LL = Culture (symbolic meaning)
LR = Systems (contextual and ecological fit)

From each of these varied perspectives on design, the nature of sustainable design and of nature itself shows up quite differently.  Yet, many environmental technology and sustainable design courses are primarily grounded in the upper right (science/mechanics) quadrant of the matrix.  What new teaching and learning opportunities would open if environmental technology and sustainable design (and today’s ecological challenges) were approached from more than one quadrant?  How could additional and multiple perspectives that include individual experience, cultural meaning, or systems and contextual fit help to solve today’s ecological problems and transform ecological design education?

Who’s right, the designosaurs or the erector heads? The answer, Yes! Who’s right, a confirmed Vital Signs technogeek or the colleague who would rather talk about the difference between the cultural significance of the Aztec and Nordic suns? Again, Yes! How can both be so? How can we develop a specific, clear language of dualism-transcending integration? Is there an “integral methodological pluralism” that fosters sustainable design? Integral Theory and the work of Ken Wilber suggests that we, as design educators, could develop more effective strategies that include all the knowledge and perspectives of a given field as well as strategies and communications that are targeted to the listening of people centered at multiple and different levels.

Stages of Learning. Humans at different, predictable stages of development and learning cannot fully understand each other. Integral theory suggests that if we are going to be effective communicators, we must craft a message that speaks at the developmental level of our audience. From the research in developmental psychology and learning theory much is known about the ways humans develop over time from birth to adulthood: cognitively and morally as well as in their sense of self. This evidence shows that adults can continue to develop and learn, again in predictable stages. Given this understanding, learning is the evolution of consciousness. Michael Zimmerman, Tulane’s well-known eco-philosopher, draws the image of climbing out of a river gorge through a series of higher terraces. With each new plateau, a new horizon emerges, which, from the lower terrain, could not have been imagined. Learning is like that.

What if we educators knew the terrain of that learning trek? Would it make any sense to point out a concept on the level-four horizon to a student on terrace two? What if we organized a curriculum attuned to the progression of student learning? Do we know at which terrace our own being is centered? Can we expand our mapping to include more breadth and depth? Integral Theory may point the way to a stage in our collective evolution, in our capacities as human beings, which can transcend and re-integrate the pathological fragmentation in which we are currently swimming academically. Many of us have had the feeling that something of the transpersonal, the ethical, and the spiritual seems to be missing from the flatland of our objective approach to the discipline.

For the 2006 SBSE Retreat we will explore how a developmental approach that accounts for stages, levels, or waves of evolution among the many different lines of human capacity—including our highest potentials—might help us open new ways to teach and learn sustainable design.

For more information:

Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice from the Integral Institute

A good, readable introduction to Ken Wilber's all-quadrants, all-levels (AQAL)
integral model.  This has great potential for creating maps of architecture's intellectual landscape and for how sustainable design education might be more effective.

The Never-Ending Upward Quest
an Interview by What is Enlightenment? magazine with Dr. Don Beck

An introduction to Beck's Spiral Dynamics model of human development on the Values line, based on the psychological research of Clare Graves.  This has some fascinating implications for design education.