The Use of Nostalgia at the Ideation Stage of Permaculture Design

Permaculture is a sustainable design practice based on patterns derived from natural systems. Sharing an ideological base with green design and eco-design, but distinguished by its systems design focus and its embedded ethical framework, it offers agency to stakeholders through its democratised design approach, but is subject to being viewed as limited in scientific rigour, and suffers from being outside mainstream narratives of how the future will be enacted. Though its practitioners view it as science-based and progressive it is viewed by wider publics as nostalgic, which may affect its popularity.
However nostalgia can conceal deep longings within the perception of sentimentality and superficiality attached to it. Identifying the locus of these longings as part of the ideation process can aid in the design of futures which align with deeply held needs rather than superficial wants.
The aims of this thesis are to establish nostalgia as an implicit or explicit factor in the perception of permaculture giving greater clarity about its positioning with stakeholders, and the exploration and development of the use of nostalgia as a generative element within the ideation process.
Interviews were conducted with UK and Australian permaculture practitioners to test for the presence and placement of nostalgia within the perception of permaculture, from novice to expert designers and across more than one culture. Testing of nostalgic elicitation as a generative tool for participatory design took place in group workshop and client interview situations.
The three core contributions made by this thesis are: (1) clarity concerning the perception of nostalgia within permaculture; (2) a framework showing the elements of nostalgic perception implicit in permaculture enabling designers to strategically plan whether and where to invest a design with nostalgic elements; and (3) an original and transferable methodology of nostalgic elicitation within the design ideation process, which through greater participation and affective appeal can be used to imbue permaculture design with more impact and longevity.