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The WHEN, the HOW and the WHERE gives us the basis of design and can be described thus:
The Design Process approached the design challenge from the perspective of a client -designer relationship. The process reviewed the steps from the initial design proposal, through to the delivery of the completed design, and placed heavy emphasis on the participation of the client (community) in all stages of the process.
Design
Sequences are
acronymic-lists of stages in a design challenge that focus the designer on
taking a systematic approach to the design. The two most
often used in permaculture design have distinctly different origins -
BREDIM comes from industrial We shall look in more detail at the first three stages in BREDIM because it is explicit about two important features of a site survey. Neither sequence explicitly encourages the involvement of the client in the design process, or involves a stage where the design brief is developed with the client. The engineering and landscape architect professions undoubtedly have their own methods for this, and we have seen some methods that permaculture designer’s use such as PASE, questionnaires, checklists, PMI, and the presentation of the conceptual design for feedback. We will see more of these methods (i.e. overleaf) but before we do, we will explore the usefulness of the design sequence.
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engineering, and SADI comes from landscape architecture. The
individual words of BREDIM can be seen to right. SADI stands for
Survey, Analysis, Design and
Implementation. Both sequences are similar in that a site survey (SADI)
would establish Boundaries and onsite Resources (BREDIM); Analysis (SADI)
is similar to Evaluation (BREDIM); Implementation is common to both; and
many people add in maintenance to make the sequence from landscape
architecture more complete (i.e. SADI(M)).
It is rare to have a clean
sheet to work with on most sites. If there are already permanent features
on the site then you will need to be able to transfer those accurately to
a basic plan of your site – this is the start of base mapping.
The simplest way to do this to have two fixed points on your
site from which you can start to take measurements. The corners
of a house would do, or you may have to drive in two posts.
The aim is to measure the distance to any of the
permanent objects on your site from BOTH
of those fixed points (i.e. to A, B and C from the two
corners or posts). If you then locate and draw the house or posts on your
plan, you can begin to triangulate the location of your
fixed objects. Pick a scale that makes it easy (i.e. 1cm on
your map could be one metre measured on the ground i.e. a scale of 1:100)
and use a pair of compasses to draw an arc
from each fixed point on your plan – the two arcs will overlap
on the plan where your feature is. Do this for all the features and for
anything significant on your boundaries. On larger sites, where long
measurements are impractical, measure from feature to feature across the
site, ensuring that there are at least two measurements to each feature,
plus some cross measurements to fixed points on boundaries to tie-in
features.
start to use them to fill in more detail about the location, and thus
produce the base map (could be a series of themed plans).
You will have all the boundaries and what they are made of,
and who takes responsibility. You also need points of access
such as roads, gates and paths; areas of frequent people use
such as benches, banks, patios and gazebos; and the
desire lines through the site where people tend naturally to
walk, even if there isn’t a path there. There will also be potential
resources you can identify such as water collection from roofs and other
surfaces, waste products looking for a use, natural resources such rocks,
stones and wood. Identify soil types, different habitats, and information
on water drainage to find free-draining or
boggy areas (see the checklist). In a people orientated design, you will
need to do a skills audit alongside a listing of the physical material and
equipment. Above all, you will be using all your skills and senses
of observation.