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Only extreme climatic changes or other extraordinary conditions cause a large, stabilized ecosystem

the way nature "designs" its systems is that natural ecosystems are our best models of sustainability. Using only the sun's energy and a handful of simple chemicals as building blocks, life has found the means to sustain itself, by organizing into ecosystems, on all but the most inhospitable portions of the planet. Large scale ecosystem can remain stable, that is, sustain themselves in a state of dynamic equilibrium, for tens of thousands of year

defines as the art and science of building.

While the structure of ecosystems has provided stability, the capacity to evolve has enabled life to meet the ongoing challenges of changing conditions.

If a major ecosystem is destroyed by events on a regional or planetary scale its territory is normally occupied by new organisms

The basic functional relationships between the three groups of organisms which comprise any ecosystem- producers, consumers and decomposers- have existed everywhere on the planet and throughout the history of life

No matter how well established an ecosystem is, its organisms can tolerate only a certain amount of change.

As human and natural systems co-evolve toward full integration, the artificial, perceptual distinction which has separated the two will fade, and the recognition will grow that there is in fact but one planetary ecosystem which includes humans among its many interrelating and cooperating species.

By contrast to natural systems, human systems have rarely been sustainable. Nor have they had to.

During most of humanity's tenancy on earth

resources and space aplenty have been readily available

The earth's riches, relative to humanity's population and expectations, were more than sufficient to provide not only for our survival but, as we have become increasingly efficient at manipulating nature and extracting her resources, for the doubling and redoubling of our population to the point where we have occupied the entire planet and become its dominant consumer.

In almost every instance, the means which humans have thus far devised to provide their food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and luxuries are dependent on a one-way flow of energy, materials, and living substance from nature toward human society. Today, most of the materials which humans do return to nature are true waste, in the sense that they are either so degraded or concentrated that they are toxic or that they will not biodegrade in a reasonable length of time and simply pile up, hoarding their stored energy rather than releasing it back into the environment for reuse

Nature, as we shall see, has evolved a much more sustainable survival strategy of balancing its production and consumption by recirculating resources within local ecosystems and throughout the biosphere, or global ecosystem

Although the human strategy of providing for ourselves at the expense of the planet's well being has generally worked until now, it is clear that our ecological bank

It is said that we have been living on the non renewable principle of nature's savings account- guzzling oil, destroying forests, soils, and oceans- rather than the renewable interest of biofuels and sustainable forestry, fisheries and agriculture

to break down to the extent that most or all of its plants, animals, and microorganisms disappear and the system cannot repair or regenerate itself.

The vision of ecotecture- a world in which humans dwell in sustainable harmony with nature- and the general approach