Integral Sustainable Design: Transformative Perspectives - Softcover

"This is an important, timely, and significant book. It brings Integral Theory to Design in a simple but profound way. Highly recommended!" – Ken Wilber, author The Integral Vision

"Every day I hear from architects, designers and students asking for advice on how and where they can begin to learn about and get involved in a much needed design revolution that goes beyond corporatist ideas of 'green' and 'sustainability.' Finally, I can point them to Mark DeKay's new book, Integral Sustainable Design which provides the framework and perspective that people who feel the inadequacy of today's design practice and theory can relate to and from which they can learn." –Sim Van der Ryn, author Ecological Design and Design for Life

"Integral Sustainable Design presents a holistic theoretical framework, which both encompasses and integrates all the perspectives and disciplines that must be considered if we are to create a sustainable society worth sustaining. It could well turn out to be the most important book yet published on sustainable design." – Gary J. Coates, Victor L. Regnier Distinguished Faculty Chair, Department of Architecture, Kansas State University

"Integral Sustainable Design gives designers a pragmatic and powerful process by which to make explicit the experiential and cultural dimensions so often left out of the common approaches to design. Both the design community at large and students of Integral Theory in other contexts will find DeKay's volume of great value. Timely, quite unique, and much needed!" – Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Ph.D., John F. Kennedy University, co-author of Integral Ecology and editor of Integral Theory in Action.

"I cautiously use the word breakthrough to describe Integral Sustainable Design because I believe that until this book, no author had connected the dots from the still-emergent field of integral theory to design in such a way as to give clear instructions for its application, particularly to sustainable architectural practice."– Lisa Norton, Metropolis Magazine

"In all respects, my expectations of DeKay’s work have been exceeded, and I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all those who seek a manifesto that meshes Integralism, Sustainability, and Design." – Marilyn Hamilton, JITP

This book offers practical and theoretical tools for more effective sustainable design solutions and for communicating sustainable design ideas to today's diverse stakeholders.

It uses integral theory to make sense of the many competing ideas in this area and offers a powerful conceptual framework for sustainable designers through the four main perspectives of: behaviours; systems; experiences; cultures.

It also uses human developmental theory to reframe sustainable design across four levels of complexity present in society: the Traditional, Modern, Postmodern, and Integral waves. Profuse with illustrations and examples, the book offers many conceptual tools including: 

• twelve principles of integral sustainable design
• sixteen prospects of sustainable design
• six perceptual shifts for ecological design thinking
• five levels of sustainable design aesthetics
• ten injunctions for designing connections to nature.