In the book – “Design with Nature” Ian L. McHarg (1920-2001), he claims that today, designing with nature should also mean designing with history. In his words – ‘designers cannot simply resist these human- and nature-induced forces, but instead need to intervene in ways that account for and respond to them. ‘ Design with nature, not design for nature.
We have seen thousands of damages in the past, as designers, we have to learn the mistakes in the past and rebuild them differently. That means we have to see things in historical perspective – or long-term perspective. We always need to take the history of the land/building, people, or politics etc into consideration.
However, I don’t think we can be able to slow the accelerated climate change or environmental degradation. But we can decide how are we gonna respond to it. Now technology drastically changed the way to operate nature – it now includes climate change, contamination and skyscrapers, they are also inseperable with nature. So now it is a more sophisticated, scientific system for designers to explore.
John Hoke, creative director of Nike recently said in an interview:
“…we’re co-creating with data…We know data can’t dream. That’s where designers come in. The job of the designer tomorrow is to take that head start, take that information and then imbue on top of that their intellect, their imagination, their heart, and their hand.”
