Integral Sustainable Design, [amazon.com] reconciles divergent knowledge arenas and priorities while establishing integral sustainable design as a unique practice, ideal for this time of environmental and communitarian crisis. It’s author, Mark DeKay, prods the profession and asks, what design challenges lie beyond whole systems design? And how can we shift our focus from ‘doing’ design to ‘being’ design? DeKay, a professor of architecture and director of Graduate Studies, College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee, has crafted an accessible introduction to the fascinating emerging field of integral studies as applied to the practice of architecture.

What is Integral Theory and why might it be useful to designers? Integral Theory is a powerful critical approach, actually considered a meta-theory due to its breadth, its applicability to interdisciplinary studies, its integration of the truth claims of the arts, sciences, and humanities as well as its integration of the perennial philosophy across Eastern and Western, sacred and secular views. Ken Wilber, the American writer, scholar and framer of Integral Theory, first began writing in the early 1970’s in his area of specialization, developmental psychology, and its intersections with spirituality and the spectrum of consciousness described throughout history. Wilber has published over 25 books. His influential ideas have found application across a range of disciplines, spawning the young but expanding global interdisciplinary movement in scholarly and practical applications of his ideas now referred to as integral studies, inclusive of but not limited to the research and writings of Wilber himself.

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