About

I’d like this blog to be a place for a conversation around issues of ecology and design, a place to explore the growing, hybridizing edges of those practices in new designs and expanding knowledge, and a place where people can look for information about best practices as we currently understand them. The principles of ecology are universal, but those principles and processes are manifested in wildly diverse ecologies–from deep water oceanic vents to tropical forests to the soils that build under prairies or the rich productivity of estuaries. New ecologies designed to solve contemporary problems and function under contemporary conditions will be equally diverse, while being based on those universal principles and practices.

I hope you’ll join the conversation, by responding to posts and suggesting ideas, books, people, and projects that you think we should know about as we do this work together of designing, building, and growing more sustainable systems.

Who is Steve Patterson? I have been working as a consultant practicing restoration ecology since 1993. For many years before that I did research, teaching, and graduate school in biogeography and in plant pathology.

I have been exploring the integration of ecology and design and the construction of ecosystems throughout my career. I worked as an ecologist for seven years at a large environmental planning firm employing many hundreds of landscape architects and I learned much from the opportunity to collaborate with them. In 1999 I organized a workshop within the company to bring together biologists and designers and explore their respective practices and predilections, with the aim of better mutual understanding and improving the quality of restoration and ecosystem design. In 2001 I organized a panel on the same topic at the Society for Ecological Restoration International’s conference in Niagara Falls, Canada. For the 2003 SER International conference in Austin, Texas I organized a design charette that brought together restoration ecologists from around the world with landscape architects and local citizens to explore ecological futures for the eastern, downstream-from-downtown reach of the Colorado River. In 2005 I formed my own company, Bio x Design (“bio by design”) to continue the practice and exploration of ecosystem design.