David Holmgren
Co-originating permaculture as a student, then restating it a generation later as twelve design principles.
The record
- Standing
- foundational work
- Based
- Holmgren Design · Hepburn Springs, Victoria, Australia
- Co originated
- Permaculture, with Bill Mollison, published as Permaculture One in 1978.
- The principles
- Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, 2002 — three ethics and twelve design principles.
- Home ground
- Melliodora, at Hepburn Springs, Victoria — the property the 2002 book repeatedly grounds itself against.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Holmgren was the young half of the original collaboration, and he is the reason the idea did not stay a seventies artefact. Permaculture One has been translated into nine languages; his own Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability took the sprawling original and reduced it to three ethics and twelve principles a designer can actually hold in their head.
What gives that book its weight is that it keeps returning to one patch of ground. Melliodora, his own property in central Victoria, is where the abstractions get tested, and the book cites it the way a paper cites data.
He publishes through Melliodora Publishing, and the summary of the principles, Essence of Permaculture, is free.
Where to read them
- Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002) Where the twelve principles are set out.
- Essence of Permaculture (PDF) A free summary of the ethics and principles.
- Holmgren Design — what permaculture is
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.