Understanding natural patterns is a fundamental part of permaculture. Permaculture aims to harmonise with patterns to create a functional design that creates healthy and resilient outcomes and to conserve energy use.
The patterns a permaculture designer aims to harmonise with - are those within the:
In this topic we explore form patterns - with the other patterns covered in the other early courses of the PDC.
By the end of the first four courses of the PDC you will have explored the application of the other patterns and can use that collective knowledge to inform your permaculture design approach.
A form pattern occurs when there is interaction between two elements, resulting in a recognisable form in one or both elements. For example: wind over water forms water into waves, humidifies the air and slows wind speed. Each phenomena has a recognisable and regular "pattern" to the interaction between these two elements.
Another main application of form patterns - is to increase the aesthetic appeal of zone 1 design. If pathways, water features, planting etc are laid out in naturalistic patterns they look a lot nicer and with an artistic eye - you can look at how to make linkages between different elements using patterns.
The hallmark of a great permaculture design is one which incorporates clear patterning aesthetics and sensibilities into the design - such as food forests on contour line swales, circular chicken mandala gardens, or naturalistic aquaculture systems. It think when this is achieved a designed system stands out as being truly permaculture inspired.
The patterns a permaculture designer aims to harmonise with - are those within the:
- climate
- topography
- orientation to sun
- wind
- land use
- social / political /economic factors
- soil
- ecosystem patterns (zonation, succession, stratification)
- form patterns (spirals, waves, cloud-forms etc)
In this topic we explore form patterns - with the other patterns covered in the other early courses of the PDC.
By the end of the first four courses of the PDC you will have explored the application of the other patterns and can use that collective knowledge to inform your permaculture design approach.
A form pattern occurs when there is interaction between two elements, resulting in a recognisable form in one or both elements. For example: wind over water forms water into waves, humidifies the air and slows wind speed. Each phenomena has a recognisable and regular "pattern" to the interaction between these two elements.
Another main application of form patterns - is to increase the aesthetic appeal of zone 1 design. If pathways, water features, planting etc are laid out in naturalistic patterns they look a lot nicer and with an artistic eye - you can look at how to make linkages between different elements using patterns.
The hallmark of a great permaculture design is one which incorporates clear patterning aesthetics and sensibilities into the design - such as food forests on contour line swales, circular chicken mandala gardens, or naturalistic aquaculture systems. It think when this is achieved a designed system stands out as being truly permaculture inspired.
"It is important to understand that patterns don’t replace the design process with an automated solution. The designs don’t just “pop out.” Rather, the patterns incorporate the information about previously successful solutions, in a way that designers, working adaptively and in a human scale, have more ready access to it. In this sense, the patterns are a tool for a very important concept known as “evidence-based design” — design that is well-adapted to solve human problems, and to meet human needs. The design is not the product of a linear mechanical process, but emerges from a process of mutual co-adaptation, proceeding in evolutionary cycles, with the information on successes transmitted in a DNA-like message. Indeed, natural systems do work just this way to solve problems and achieve sustainability: specifically, they retain and evolve information about adaptive form." – The Pattern Technology of Christopher Alexander
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Goal of Pattern Recognition
The main goal in applying patterns in landscape design is to harmonise with natrual processes that are constantly working to build a balanced interaction of diverse elements, in order to store as much energy moving through an ecosystem as possible within living things.
By harmonising with this process the maximum productivity from an ecosystem can be obtained. To ensure this productivity leans towards species that have food value to us, constant alternation and refinement of the processes is required, until the progression of those systems towards a steady state in in harmony with your design.
This process guides the assembly of natural systems, which develop into complex, self-regulating assemblies of life that result in the longest storage of energy passing through an ecosystem before it is lost again. Without this storage of energy, it would otherwise quickly pass through an ecosystem and the opportunity for that energy to sustain life be lost. The more complexity within a system the more opportunity for that energy to passed between different organisms within beneficial interactions or consumption of each other resulting in a greater yield from that system.
Because we too want to harvest the greatest yield from a system we benefit from recreating this natural complexity and in so doing result in a diversity of beneficial yields.
By harmonising with this process the maximum productivity from an ecosystem can be obtained. To ensure this productivity leans towards species that have food value to us, constant alternation and refinement of the processes is required, until the progression of those systems towards a steady state in in harmony with your design.
This process guides the assembly of natural systems, which develop into complex, self-regulating assemblies of life that result in the longest storage of energy passing through an ecosystem before it is lost again. Without this storage of energy, it would otherwise quickly pass through an ecosystem and the opportunity for that energy to sustain life be lost. The more complexity within a system the more opportunity for that energy to passed between different organisms within beneficial interactions or consumption of each other resulting in a greater yield from that system.
Because we too want to harvest the greatest yield from a system we benefit from recreating this natural complexity and in so doing result in a diversity of beneficial yields.
Recognising structural patterns in nature
Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks and stripes.
From sea shells and spiral galaxies to the structure of human lungs, the patterns of chaos are all around us. Fractals are patterns formed from chaotic equations and contain self-similar patterns of complexity increasing with magnification. If you divide a fractal pattern into parts you get a nearly identical reduced-size copy of the whole. The mathematical beauty of fractals is that infinite complexity is formed with relatively simple equations. By iterating or repeating fractal-generating equations many times, random outputs create beautiful patterns that are unique, yet recognizable.
From sea shells and spiral galaxies to the structure of human lungs, the patterns of chaos are all around us. Fractals are patterns formed from chaotic equations and contain self-similar patterns of complexity increasing with magnification. If you divide a fractal pattern into parts you get a nearly identical reduced-size copy of the whole. The mathematical beauty of fractals is that infinite complexity is formed with relatively simple equations. By iterating or repeating fractal-generating equations many times, random outputs create beautiful patterns that are unique, yet recognizable.
Fractal Patterns - The new Era of science
Entropy and the life Paradox
Entropy and the organisation of life form an apparent paradox. On one hand entropy describes how the universe is trending towards a greater state of disorder, meaning that the energy within the universe is degrading to less intense and useful forms, such as heat, radio waves and others associated at the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, life on Earth forms an apparent contradiction of this trend, organising itself in breath-taking complexity. The patterning of the organisation of life is a central idea to permaculture which seeks to describe a system of understanding nature and organising food producing systems in harmony with it.
All energy in the universe was originally ‘created’ during the big bang and was at a very high energy state (associated with high intensity waves at the highest end of the electromagnetic spectrum). There is speculation over the context of the big bang phenomena and weather it represents a cyclical event (expansion and contraction of universe) or perhaps the popping up of a different bubble of the universe. Since the big bang occurred the energy within the universe had undergone countless transformations and during each transformation a certain percentage is changed into a low energy state (heat). The Law of entropy states that when the state of energy before and after a transformation has occurred are compared there must be more energy in a lower energy state after this transformation.
If the universe is tending towards a greater state of disorder and ‘lower energy’ how then does life organise itself in amazing complexity in apparent contradiction to this ‘disordering’ of the universe? Life is no exception, and to create the order observed in life on Earth more energy is lost as heat during every energy transformation than is stored in living things (or transferred in interactions between them). The more active an organism is the more heat is lost (which is why warm blooded animals are so ‘warm’).
To ensure the energy passing through an ecosystem has greatest opportunity to support life, life organises itself into complex interactions where the energy is exchanged between organisms before leaving a system. For this exchange to occur it must first be incorporated into biological form which is the magic plants do in photosynthesis.
To replicate this functional complexity permaculture design aims to create a similar diversity of interconnected life forms and assembly the species diversity in favour of those that produce a useful yield. The selection of those species will then depend on suitability to environmental conditions (biotic 'living' and abiotic 'non-living'), which will get along well together in useful guilds, which provide compatible services (when combining plant and animal species), which can cope with local pathogens and predators in wildlife, and finally can produce a useful yield that can harvested to produce a useful economic return (or just feed your tummy).
All energy in the universe was originally ‘created’ during the big bang and was at a very high energy state (associated with high intensity waves at the highest end of the electromagnetic spectrum). There is speculation over the context of the big bang phenomena and weather it represents a cyclical event (expansion and contraction of universe) or perhaps the popping up of a different bubble of the universe. Since the big bang occurred the energy within the universe had undergone countless transformations and during each transformation a certain percentage is changed into a low energy state (heat). The Law of entropy states that when the state of energy before and after a transformation has occurred are compared there must be more energy in a lower energy state after this transformation.
If the universe is tending towards a greater state of disorder and ‘lower energy’ how then does life organise itself in amazing complexity in apparent contradiction to this ‘disordering’ of the universe? Life is no exception, and to create the order observed in life on Earth more energy is lost as heat during every energy transformation than is stored in living things (or transferred in interactions between them). The more active an organism is the more heat is lost (which is why warm blooded animals are so ‘warm’).
To ensure the energy passing through an ecosystem has greatest opportunity to support life, life organises itself into complex interactions where the energy is exchanged between organisms before leaving a system. For this exchange to occur it must first be incorporated into biological form which is the magic plants do in photosynthesis.
To replicate this functional complexity permaculture design aims to create a similar diversity of interconnected life forms and assembly the species diversity in favour of those that produce a useful yield. The selection of those species will then depend on suitability to environmental conditions (biotic 'living' and abiotic 'non-living'), which will get along well together in useful guilds, which provide compatible services (when combining plant and animal species), which can cope with local pathogens and predators in wildlife, and finally can produce a useful yield that can harvested to produce a useful economic return (or just feed your tummy).