Learning and growing in a classroom with Dan Palmer has opened me up to a new understanding about design process and holistic approaches to decision making. His classes are explorations into a new territory in which we are all the empowered designers of our own lives in co-operation with everyone and everything around us. His significant contributions to the field of permaculture can be explored through comprehensive writings, podcasts, videos accessible through a plethora of websites.
Thank you Dan, for challenging the norms of the design process and for encouraging us to feel and interact with the landscapes we work within. The ideas behind Living Design Process can be applied to any aspect of our lives, allowing us to bring consciousness and feeling back into what we do everyday.
I found your thoughts on the living design process very deeply useful. I have been using this process with my work this year … and have been intrigued with the reactions in my self and others as we are confronted with the letting go of the ‘Master plan” and letting life take its course and giving the land time to reveal itself to us… Lovely to now have a bit more of a common language around these ideas.
Dan is a natural teacher and a gun at taking people on an intellectual journey that inspires them into real, meaningful action. He’s also a warm, friendly, straight talker – meaning he doesn’t waste time and gets straight to the important things. His one day Living Design workshop was a joy to see him in action and, as a permaculture designer, affirming and deepening for my own professional practice.
This is really life-affirming for me to learn about this living design process – it resonates with my life journey and where I’m at in my architectural practice – but I’ve not heard it explained or articulated this way before. I’ll definitely be more aware of my design process with clients and be implementing more of this to enhance my life and my client’s lives!
Dan’s Living Design Course enabled a sort of integration of processes familiar to me in one aspect of my life which i would not have otherwise applied to the design of land and environment. It validates and encourages a felt response to design, which feels organic, natural, life affirming – a process most likely to lead to beauty in form and function.
Hugely thought and heart-provoking. I’m so much more energised and inspired for the future!
My mind’s been buzzing ever since. I’m currently in the process of writing a blog post about my house renovation/edible forest garden and how that relates to the concepts you discussed. A lot of what both you and Louise said resonated with me very strongly.
I found the process today incredibly beneficial in understanding the application of wholistic management and decision making to bring about form and social structures and in how to make these ideas of a whole actually show up in the world
It is so exciting to see Christopher Alexander’s ideas adopted, adapted and communicated in a way that honours his work and the current context of who and where we are
I have had parts of the workshop running through my head over the last two days. It won’t stop!!! I think I started by saying the my piece of land was a blank canvas. As the workshop progressed I realised how untrue that was. As the day went by it was clear that your process is multidimensional (space,time, heart, smell and more) and require more senses that most people use on a daily basis.
Living process design. Integrity, honesty, nature, perfection, challenge, intuitive, personal, well being. Some words I’m left with.
After this day of talking and sharing I simply feel more alive. The life and the living and the constant ebbs and flows of nature and of ourselves need to be at the heart of our designing
Thank you for having the courage to step up and speak from your heart and take permaculture to the next level of its evolution. Everything resonated so deeply.
Asking the right questions is really what Dan’s living design process seems to be all about. Finding that sweet spot between intentional action and thoughtful reflection.
It is on that cusp of the dance floor of think-and-do that Dan mixes his passionate encouragement, incisive questions and courage to accept the consequences. And perhaps that
is the bigger hope for Living Design Process: that we can all become more empowered to find that state of productive liberation.