Design methods

What the design methods are

The design process sets the order in which a permaculture design is made. The design methods describe how the thinking inside those steps is done. In chapter 3 of Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), Bill Mollison set out eight of them, each with a short subtitle: analysis, design by listing the characteristics of components; observation, design by expanding on direct observations of a site; deduction from nature, design by adopting lessons learnt from nature; options and decisions, design as a selection of pathways based on decisions; data overlay, design by map overlays; random assembly, design by assessing the results of random assemblies; flow diagrams, design for workplaces; and zone and sector analysis, design by the application of a master pattern.

None of them is a complete recipe. Each looks at a site from a different angle, and each catches things the others miss. Christoff Schneider's permaculture school teaches the same eight methods in its German-language design courses, and its course materials supply the five examples for random assembly used below. The explanations of them are our own.

The eight methods

1. Analysis

Every element of a design is described by what it needs, what it yields and what it is like by nature. Mollison's best-known example is the chicken. Besides eggs it yields feathers, manure, warmth and carbon dioxide, and it scratches the ground; it needs food, water, shelter and company. Once the cards are written, lines are drawn from each yield to an element that needs it. Where a yield finds a taker, waste disappears; where a need is left open, someone has to supply it with work. The method is described step by step under element analysis. It shows what belongs together. It leaves the question of where things should stand to other methods.

2. Observation

Here the design grows out of what is seen on the land: where water runs after heavy rain and where it stands, where the morning sun reaches first, which plants come up without being sown, where animals cross. Each observation is followed by two questions: why is it so, and how could it be used? Mollison described permaculture in Introduction to Permaculture (1991) as long and thoughtful observation instead of long and thoughtless labour. The principle observe and interact carries the same idea. Observation is slow, and it is the method that most often saves a costly mistake.

3. Deduction from nature

Natural systems have already solved many of the problems a designer faces: how to keep soil covered, how to hold water on a slope, how to grow many plants in one place without fertiliser bought from outside. This method asks how the local wild vegetation manages without anyone's help, and copies the pattern. The litter layer under trees is the model for mulch; the layered edge of a young woodland is the model for a food forest. The answer differs from place to place, which is why the model is taken from the surrounding landscape.

4. Options and decisions

A design can be seen as a path of choices. Each decision opens some routes and closes others. The method writes down the options before choosing, follows each one a few steps ahead, and only then decides. Whether a garden takes its water from a roof tank, a pond or a well, for example, changes where the beds lie, whether a pump is needed and how much water is left in summer. Early decisions therefore carry far, and it pays to name what each one rules out.

5. Data overlay

Each kind of information is drawn on its own transparent sheet laid over a base map: contours, water flow, soils, vegetation, sun and wind, access and boundaries. Laid together, the sheets show where conditions coincide, for example where a moist channel crosses a much-used path. The approach goes back to the landscape planner Ian McHarg, who stacked transparent maps in Design with Nature (1969). Today a free GIS program does the same with digital layers. The German summary of Mollison's Designers' Manual notes that this method can be confusing and is extremely imprecise, and for that reason does not go into it further. On its own, then, overlaying does not yet make a design; it gathers material for the other methods. How to draw the sheets is explained under base map and overlays. An overlay shows where things are; it does not show how two elements will work together.

6. Random assembly

The elements are put together without a reason first, in pairs or by placing them at random on the plan, and every combination is then judged for what it could yield. The method relies on a childlike view free of preconceptions, which Schneider's course materials call a "child like approach without prepossession", and brings unusual connections into view. The same materials give five examples: chickens in the greenhouse, the greenhouse built onto the house, the water tank higher than the house, the store next to the barn and the barn next to the exit. What they can yield we explain as follows. The chickens' warmth and the carbon dioxide they breathe out benefit the plants, and the greenhouse shelters the birds. A greenhouse built onto the house gathers the sun's heat and passes part of it to the rooms. From a tank set higher up, water reaches the taps by gravity, with pressure and without a pump. With the store next to the barn, feed, bedding and tools are close at hand. With the barn next to the exit, feed, animals and manure move in and out without crossing the rest of the farm. Many pairings lead nowhere and are dropped. The method is worth the effort for the few that stay.

7. Flow diagrams

Mollison calls this method design for workplaces. The paths of people, goods and tools through a kitchen, a workshop, a barn, a packing shed or a plant nursery are drawn as lines on the floor plan. Long, doubled or crossing lines show where the layout costs time every day. The room is then rearranged so that the work moves in one direction, for instance from the harvest arriving through washing and sorting to storage and dispatch. A flow diagram takes little work on paper and saves steps for years.

8. Zone and sector analysis

Mollison calls this the application of a master pattern. Zones order the elements by how often they are visited. Schneider puts it as two questions: how often do I go there, and how often does it have to be visited? Elements that need daily care lie close to the house, those that need little lie further out. In Schneider's extended model the zones run from zone 00, the designer's own insight, vision and goals, through zone 0, the house, and the classic zones I to V, to zone VI, yield from beyond one's own land, and zone VII, yield that comes to the household from outside. Sectors order the energies that reach the site from outside: sun, wind, water and fire, but also views, noise and paths. Together, zones and sectors give each element a place where it is easy to reach and where outside forces work for it or are held off.

Using the methods together

The methods can be used in any order. One practical way of combining them: observation and data overlay gather what is there; analysis and deduction from nature suggest what could belong together; random assembly widens the field with ideas no one would have chosen on purpose; options and decisions narrow it down; zone and sector analysis and flow diagrams put every element in its place. The design process provides the frame in which this happens, and Mollison's design principles are the rules against which the result is checked.

Common mistakes

• Relying on one method. A plan built from zones alone places elements well that are poorly connected; an analysis without zones connects elements that stand too far apart.
• Judging random pairings too early. The value of random assembly lies in the pairs that look odd at first. Striking them out after a moment's thought defeats the purpose.
• Overlays without walking the land. Maps and data show a great deal, but not where people really walk, where the soil is compacted or where water runs after a storm. Those layers come from observation.

How Terra Humana understands the design methods

For Terra Humana the eight methods are a toolbox. The German names in the TerraWiki follow the course materials of Christoff Schneider's permaculture school. At Sa Medada the work is still at the stage of observation and gathering data, and the methods that place elements on the land come later.