It took only sixty years of technological advancement to enabled human settlements to exist almost completely independent of the environmental and ecological systems that sustain them. Design as agency can begin to take on a role that imagines contemporary alternative visions for future growth. Visions that are dependent on, and informed by, their ecological and geographic systems, and therefore necessitate an integrated rapport between landscape, architecture and urban planning and design. It is a method by which the watershed emerges as a tool for design, and where ecology helps dictate longer lasting and contemporary frameworks for infrastructure, agriculture, and human settlement.
