My students this spring semester embarked on a journey. They essentially wrote the “brief” for the next generation of students who will approach the idea of world design in the coming Fall’s Studio.

Human civilization’s impact the earth’s ecosystems is recognized as the most recent geologic time period called the Anthropocene.* In response to this recognition, we are intentionally directing our actions as part of a field of connected consequences. We are designers. Directing actions to consequences is design. I call intentions that direct actions to a field of connected consequences, Design by Field.

We boldly approached the site of the global ribbon of shoreline in developing a set of intentions for this site. These intentions will be picked up this fall by another group of students.  This work in progress can be found here.

* In 2000 Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer coined the term Anthropocene in support of the idea that humanity could affect the whole earth system. The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time