Essence of Good Design

Antony Radford is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at Adelaide University, Australia, where he has taught and researched architecture, urban design, and digital design. In 1999 he contributed to an international conference on Ethics in the Built Environment organised by Warwick Fox, and was immediately attracted to Warwick’s Theory of General Ethics and his idea of responsive cohesion. It provided a unifying philosophical basis for design themes that interested him, such as respect for contexts, cooperation, and sustainability. Antony’s other books include Digital Design: A Critical Introduction (with Dean Bruton), Understanding Sustainable Architecture (with Terry Williamson and Helen Bennetts), and The Elements of Modern Architecture, an analysis of contemporary buildings through annotated drawings (with Amit Srivastava and Selen Morkoç). Alongside research and writing, Antony draws, hikes, and competes in the navigation sport of orienteering.Warwick Fox is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Lancashire, and his books include Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism; Ethics and the Built Environment (ed.); A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment; and On Beautiful Days Such as This: A Philosopher’s Search for Love, Work, Place, Meaning, and Suchlike. His main areas of philosophical interest are environmental philosophy, General Ethics (a term he coined and defined), developing his theory of responsive cohesion approach to General Ethics, and the nature of the interior lives of humans and other animals. When not researching and writing, Warwick’s interests include singing and playing acoustic guitar, songwriting, listening to music, and reading and watching good quality drama. His personal website is www.warwickfox.comIsis Brook (PhD) has taught a wide range of philosophy courses for the Open University, Lancaster University, and the University of Lancashire. Her main research emphases have been environmental philosophy and aesthetics. She was Course Leader of Lancaster University’s pioneering MA in Values and Environment and was also Managing Editor for the journal Environmental Values. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on phenomenology of place, landscape, aesthetics of nature, and Goethe’s approach to nature. Isis co-authored Between Nature and Culture: The Aesthetics of Modified Environments (with Emily Brady and Jonathan Prior, 2018) and is Deputy Editor of the journal Plant Perspectives, an interdisciplinary journal for plant humanities. Her current research and writing focus is plant-human relationships. Her passion, unsurprisingly, is gardening. Her personal website is: www.isisbrook.uk

"This is a book that designers will actually want to read. It doesn’t try to be flashy or overly clever. It’s clear, thoughtful, and useful."Jonathan Chapman, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design

• 1. An Orientation to Design 2. The Idea of Responsive Cohesion 3. The Importance of Contexts 4. Garden Design and Responsive Cohesion 5. Domestic Objects and Responsive Cohesion 6. Architecture and Responsive Cohesion 7. Urban Design and Responsive Cohesion 8. Cultural Landscapes and Responsive Cohesion 9. What Have We Learnt? 10. How to: Implementing Responsively Cohesive Design