Design on an environmental backcloth differs from other types of design, in two crucial respects. First, it compares with drawing on sand or on the bark of a tree, rather than with drawing on white paper. Second, it differs because "the environment' is not one thing or a thousand things: it is interpreted and used by each species and each individual in different ways, depending on their niche in society and in the ecosystem. You may think of your garden as a rectangle; babies, birds, worms and spiders will have different conceptions of the "same space'. Ideas about what the environment is lie at the heart of the design process. They may be viewed as structures and represented by patterns, as discussed in the previous chapter. Three analogies (Figure 4.1, below), each concerned with purposive change, can be used to illustrate aspects of the environmental designer's predicament.
Design on the bark of a tree
Fig 4.1 Analogies for the environmental designer’s predicament: a coach, a doctor and the flight of a honeybee.
Ink drawing, responding to the grain on polished wood (from a box, made in Jerusalem).
