Permaculture in home design

In the search for a model for organising our society in a fair, stable and sustainable way, permaculture emerges as a set of principles that respect and integrate with the natural ecosystem. In today’s post, we analyse its viability in the urban framework and in our own homes, and we invite you to explore the application of permaculture in home design.

It seems we have come to accept that the fight against climate change requires redefining our society as we know it—moving away from the consumption model and seeking alternatives such as the circular economy, local products, zero waste, net-zero homes… and a whole series of terms that may sound very alternative today, but will have to become the new normal if we want to continue living on this planet in a stable way, rather than facing climate change that threatens our survival.

In recent years, we have been witnessing the awakening of a collective awareness to confront climate change. It is becoming increasingly clear that globalisation as such—understood as the constant movement of people and products—is not sustainable. The focus is shifting towards local production and consumption, and towards creating self-sufficient communities that generate their own energy and resources and manage their own waste.

Whether at the scale of a small neighbourhood association or that of a large city, interdependent self-sufficiency is being put forward in the most advanced countries as a path towards global sustainability.

Redefining the consumer society

The consumer society as we know it seems to place itself above basic and necessary concepts such as local self-sufficiency, living in harmony with nature, or sustainable production.

However, consumption is an essential human activity, so the aim is not to eliminate it, but to redefine it by progressively reducing the use of resources and energy required.

We are talking about meeting our basic needs within ecological limits, replacing competitiveness with cooperation, and shifting from being ‘against’ nature to being ‘in favour’ of it.

From this reflection, permaculture emerges: a set of practices that pursue the goal of living in harmony—plants, animals and human beings—meeting the real needs of all of them; understanding that humanity plays a far more modest role than the anthropocentric view would have us believe.

It responds to the adaptive dynamics used by nature—dynamics that human beings seem to have forgotten—and it speaks to us of sustainable environments in all their dimensions: social, economic and environmental.

Permaculture

Permaculture dates back to the 1970s, when David Holmgren coined the term from the combination of the concepts ‘permanent’ (in the sense of sustainable) and ‘agriculture’. Although the initial starting point was agriculture, over time the idea expanded to the need to apply it on a larger scale.

Holmgren devised a framework called the Permaculture Flower, highlighting the key areas needed to achieve a culture of sustainability. The framework is so comprehensive and current that it unmistakably resembles the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN in 2015 for 2030. This significant similarity confirms that we are talking about sustainable development at its fullest expression, for the benefit of all parties.

Permaculture applied to city design

Before looking at how permaculture principles can be applied to home design, it is worth starting at a larger scale—how they can benefit today’s and tomorrow’s cities. Today, cities consume between 60–80% of global energy and account for 75% of carbon emissions, making them the decisive arena in which to fight the battle for sustainability.

The future of cities

The future of cities continues to be one of exponential growth, as in recent decades, reaching a new unit of measurement: megacities. The UN estimates that 70% of human beings will live in urban centres by 2050.

For this reason, it is increasingly necessary to propose a symbiosis between urban planning and permaculture, to find a balance between this massive population and food production. Food has always shaped the urban planning of cities, making it a far more powerful tool than we tend to think—powerful and decisive in how we relate to nature, answering the question: how can we feed a city of several million people while remaining in balance with the environment?

Urban permaculture proposals

As we have been outlining, most urban permaculture proposals rightly focus on consumption and food, and they are increasingly taking shape: prioritising local, seasonal products; avoiding over-packaged goods; promoting organic gardens and organic farming… Some ideas become possible thanks to public–private collaboration, even revitalising the economy through agroecological production or so-called eco-tourism.

Another area is sustainable mobility, closely linked to reducing emissions by removing motor traffic and the resulting calming of cities, which improves users’ lives in countless ways.

Finally, there is an urgent need for change in waste management. This is not the recycling narrative we are used to; permaculture speaks of ‘closing loops’, meaning there should be no waste. We explore this concept in depth in the article Zero-waste home, where we review the famous 5Rs. However, there are many other proposals that defend this principle: from the circular economy to eco-design of products, including industrial ecology.

Permaculture applied to home design

Continuing with the systematic method devised by Holmgren, after the three ethical principles he set out 12 design principles intended to serve as a guide when creating sustainable systems. Let us see what they were and how we can apply permaculture in home design:

The 12 basic design principles

1. Observe and interact:

By trying to keep our minds and eyes open to get as close as possible to a utopian ‘neutral gaze’, Holmgren speaks of observing with nature and its complex system of interrelationships as our reference. Our ability to identify patterns both in nature and in our inner nature is key to redesigning a more natural way of life.

In architecture, what happens before we start designing is almost more significant than the final result. The more thorough the analysis of the environment, the particularities of future users and their real needs, the more knowledge we will have to respond in the most efficient and appropriate way possible.

We can strongly relate this idea to bioclimatic architecture, which we champion at the studio, as it responds closely to the characteristics of the site and climate, creating integrated systems that benefit different ecosystems (natural, social and indoor).

Along the same lines, the connection with the user is essential, understanding their lifestyle through visits to their current home and even sharing information about certain dynamics that could be improved, always with the aim of reducing consumption.

2. Capture and store resources:

Nature is an expert at storing energy in each of its elements. However, human beings seem to have forgotten that ability in recent times, hoarding and wasting all material wealth without any mindset of continuity. If we want to endure and grow as a living system, we must learn to manage our energy reserves.

It is true that this discourse clearly challenges the excessive use of non-renewable sources and seeks to back sustainable energy alternatives, as the ‘green fever’ in architecture has done in recent years by revaluing energies such as solar, wind, aerothermal and geothermal.

But the real lesson is to go further: to deliver the best possible architecture using the resources available. Integrating permaculture principles into home design helps us become more aware of the ecological footprint associated with each of the proposed elements.

Capturing and storing can be as simple as capturing sunlight and storing it through thermal mass walls, or conversely, capturing the cool of the night and storing it in walls, protecting us from the sun during the day.

3. Obtain a yield:

To obtain the best yield, we must stop being dependent consumers and become responsible, independent producers. Creating gives us power and energy, while consumption only takes it away. In our urban societies, there is an increasing disconnect from our consumption: almost no one grows their own food, sews their own clothes or repairs their appliances, partly because the consumer society encourages it—how often is it cheaper to buy a new one than to sew or repair the old one? Large-scale production in developing countries allows major multinationals to make a synthetic T-shirt manufactured in China and shipped to Spain by boat cheaper than one made locally with organic cotton.

For this reason, self-sufficiency—even to the point of being able to disconnect our home from the grid—will be our greatest ally on the path to reducing resource consumption.

Collecting rainwater, generating our own energy, and growing our own food turn our home into a productive ecosystem in which we not only live, but also generate—and can even exchange or sell surpluses. In fact, the self-consumption electricity law already allows several neighbours to share a photovoltaic generation installation, exchanging energy when needed.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback:

Nature, as a good example of a self-regulating system, responds to what we might call a higher-order intelligence. Ecosystems ensure the survival and health of their species, feeding back in a perfect balance between the autonomy of the parts and higher-order controls.

As we have been saying throughout the article, human society seems either to have lost this capacity or simply to lack the will to think about the negative repercussions of its actions. Even if these consequences are not immediately visible—which is increasingly questionable—we must make the effort to think long term and understand the responsibility that falls to us.

Let us stop seeing technological expansion as the ultimate evolutionary goal and embrace the self-regulating aspects intrinsic to human culture, also in architecture by applying permaculture in home design. It must not only respond to the present, but also anticipate future negative outcomes of the design and avoid them.

5. Use and value renewable services and resources:

Both the energy that makes a forest grow and the energy that gives us life come from entirely renewable sources. However, human activity today is largely fuelled by non-renewable sources—finite, expensive and polluting. Moreover, these non-renewable sources increase our sense of distance from nature.

Thus, revaluing the resources available to us makes us less of consumers and more of creators. Applying permaculture concepts in home design advocates reincorporating systems and materials from vernacular architecture that we have forgotten. Not only the renewable energies already mentioned, but also materials such as adobe, cork, straw, bamboo and timber from sustainably managed forests.

6. Stop producing waste:

If we define sustainability as the ability to leave no negative impact on the planet, reducing waste becomes an essential path. However, for the time being, the impact generated is such that perhaps we should think about creating a positive impact until we reach a point of balance.

In this way, it is very easy to waste when we are in abundance, but bringing this debate into architecture: what would we do if we did not have warehouses full of construction materials to build our projects?

In fact, if we go further, we could even design based on standard material dimensions to avoid offcuts and waste.

7. Design from patterns to details:

Patterns can be detected in nature and then used as pillars of design, incorporating details as we move forward in the creative process. They can range from structural patterns (waves, branching…) to behavioural patterns (packs, families…) or patterns that shape our spirit. To explain this principle, Holmgren uses the example of spider webs: each one is unique; however, the geometric pattern of spiral rings is universal.

Focusing on architectural design, we see that there is no need to reinvent the wheel every time; there are already working schemes we can use as a solid base from which to develop and adapt to a specific context/user. In fact, traditional architecture responds to methods widely refined through trial and error over time, starting from nature’s inherent interdependence. We will hardly be able to compete by developing entirely new schemes, but we can adapt them to modern methods and conditions.

8. Integrate rather than segregate:

The whole is more than the sum of its parts; the connections between elements are more important than the elements themselves. A beehive is a good example of multiple organisms working together, similar to traditional extended families with three generations living together. However, over time we have become an excessively individualistic modern society.

In architectural design, this reflection seems increasingly present. Co-creation processes consist of generating mechanisms that encourage the integration of different users in decision-making.

Other experiences include cohousing or ecological housing communities, in which a collective can pool resources and rethink ideas together until building a new way of living in community. One example we highlight on the blog is senior cohousing, which shows that making certain services communal rather than private leads to greater efficiency.

9. Use slow and small solutions:

To create and strengthen sustainable living systems, we must learn to listen to and respect natural rhythms and intervene at the optimal scale. Slow and small systems are easier to maintain than large and fast ones, make better use of local resources, and produce lasting results. Despite this certainty, humanity seems to continue to follow criteria of gigantism, massification, a cult of speed, immediacy, etc.

At this point, the concept of maintenance appears—a topic that is more relevant in architecture, as construction is a major source of global emissions and waste. The larger a building is, the more resources and processes are required to preserve it and prevent deterioration. Therefore, we should value refurbishment as the option to prioritise, rather than the building boom (or rather, the concrete boom) in which our society is immersed.

In any case, smaller buildings are also easier to heat (and therefore more energy-efficient) and allow us to reconsider whether we truly need such an excess of low-quality space.

10. Use and value diversity:

While there is ample scientific evidence that diversity of individuals, populations, ages, cultures… are factors that contribute to stability in natural and human systems, the socio-political system constantly tends towards uniformity. On the other hand, although many cities do contain diversity, compartmentalising it into isolated ghettos and preventing relationships between different parts does not provide any stability either.

Faced with an uncertain and changing future, Holmgren values diversity and its ability to reduce vulnerability to a range of possible threats.

Integrating permaculture into home design means reflecting the specificity of each proposal, which acts as an ‘insurance policy’ against variations in our environment. The truth is that if all houses were the same, we would have a problem, because it would mean they are not responding correctly to different contexts. The reality is that in our country there are numerous examples of housing developments that respond little or not at all to their surroundings, and we must fight against this standardisation and anonymity in all fields.

11. Seek the edges and value the marginal:

Edges are considered outside the norm because we tend to have a centralising view of the world; this happens in cities but also on a global scale between countries. It is in these intermediate spaces that the most interesting events occur, with greater dynamism and richness—the most diverse and productive within the system. Generally, they arise as a series of spontaneous situations that, in most cases, are right because they emerge naturally, without pressure or stereotypes.

For example, it is the cell membrane that ‘thinks’, not its nucleus, regulating the entry of information from the environment and thus shaping our behaviours. We must begin to appreciate the countless boundaries in our lives.

Unfortunately, the fact that everyone does something does not mean it is right, and permaculture is a good example of an alternative to the dominant narrative: it invites us not to settle for what is established, playing the game society expects of us, and to give an opportunity to what lies outside the norm.

In the same way, architectural design should be approached by avoiding preconceived ideas and fashions that restrict our approach to the margins, because it is easy to overlook a project’s ‘key point’.

12. Use and respond creatively to change:

Certain Eastern wisdom traditions are clear that change is the only reality and does not have to carry negative connotations. In fact, radical transformations are part of nature’s tradition; a good example is the transition from life to non-life.

We can create a positive impact on inevitable change by observing carefully and then intervening at the right moment. Holmgren argues that vision is not seeing things as they are, but imagining how they will be. If we are truly convinced that change is needed, we must stop making a linear projection of existing reality into the future. It is not only about fighting the existing reality, but about building a new model that makes the current one obsolete.

From an architectural perspective, throughout the article we have been breaking down how applying permaculture principles in home design helps us become aware that the buildings constructed today will shape tomorrow’s context, so it is necessary to anticipate what is to come by envisioning a truly different future: the best possible future.