Green Design: Introduction to Integral Sustainable Design Theory

This 4-hour interactive online course outlines a new, rigorous theoretical and practical approach to understanding sustainable design (SD).

Though the concepts covered are fundamental to full-fledged Sustainable Design, they challenge the participant on an advanced level. The course is not designed to deepen specific knowledge about LEED topics. Instead, the course places LEED into its larger context and thereby helps the LEED AP better understand the other non-technical perspectives on sustainability. As such, it provides the possibility for you to communicate with and better understand the design team members who are not working with the purely technical aspects of design.

The course covers all of the major ways of thinking about sustainable design. We will use an Integral lens to view SD from four fundamental perspectives: Technology, Ecology, Art, and Culture. We will also examine the four major contemporary worldviews on SD: Traditional, Modern, Post-modern, and Integral. In doing so, the Integral approach offers the designer the potential for using a better map of the SD terrain.