Whole Systems Design, LLC

Whole Systems Design is composed of an interdisciplinary team of land planners, ecologists, builders, and educators that live in their designs. We unify conventionally disparate fields to develop regenerative places. We differ from other designers in that we actually live inside of our work everyday. We don't work in class A office space; we live amidst the spaces, plants and ecosystems we design.

We build soil, tend to fruit trees, fix tractors, tweak wood stoves, sharpen axes, raise vegetables, fruit and fish, stack firewood, tune solar hot water systems, and learn from the innumerable ways one lives in a productive landscape across the seasons. We could not deliver valuable site and building design and construction experience without practicing the content of our design on a daily basis. Since the practice of modern architecture and land design is far removed from the consequences of its application it reliably produces dysfunctional spaces unfit for vibrant people and other living things. This distancing of designer from the designed is why these fields have continually lost relevance for the past 50 years. Our practice is part of the design-build, owner-builder movement that is transcending the industrial process which has passed for 'design' for far too long.