Humans are but one species in the circle of life on the planet Earth. However, they are the ones with the capacity for the greatest power and intelligence. And with power and intelligence comes responsibility. In this case, the responsibility is to ensure the continuity of that circle of life.

Within this framework, says David Pearson, Dip. Arch. (Honors), MCRP, RIBA, designers might necessarily bear a large part of the responsibility because they shape lifestyles with the way they design our homes and work places. Pearson believes that no matter how small or simple a job may be, there is always the broader agenda of life "in" the Earth to consider.

"We have always thought of ourselves as living on Earth," he says. "But that isn't true. We live in the Earth, or with the Earth. Everything we do affects the health of the whole planet. Conversely, the health of the planet affects our individual health. If you understand this, then you can begin to see the importance of living in harmony with the Earth."

This belief of life in sync with nature is based on Gaian thinking. According to Pearson, Gaia, who was the Earth personified as a goddess in Greek mythology, is now the term used to express the holistic existence of life on the planet. In other words, the organic whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and humans are integral partners within this whole.

With Gaian thinking in mind, Pearson has set out to spread the word to his colleagues that it is indeed possible to build homes and work places that are in sync with nature, and in so doing to enhance the well-being of the human body and spirit. Pearson also contends that bearing a greater responsibility to ensure the future of Gaia -- the Earth -- is a privilege for designers, not a burden.

For most of his working life, Pearson, educated at the University of London and the University of California, Berkeley, was actively involved in inner city and new community housing. As this work began to wind down for him, his wife, Joss Pearson, was starting Gaia Books Ltd., an international co-edition publishing house.

In the course of his career, Pearson had become interested in ecology and searched to find information on the subject as it related to design. To his dismay, there wasn't much to find back in the early 1980s. Thus, Pearson decided to research and author a book on the subject himself. The Natural House Book was published in the United States by Simon & Schuster, in 1989.

"My first idea for a title was 'The Green House Book,'" says Pearson. "But that only would imply houses designed in harmony with the environment. I also intended to show houses that were in harmony with the human spirit. So, we arrived at The Natural House Book."

According to Pearson, the book pinpoints three touchstones that buildings of the future will need integrated in harmonious ways:

• environmental awareness, i.e., consideration of local climate and topography;
• the use of healthy, non-toxic and sustainable materials;
• and a deeper understanding of the spiritual side of home.

In his second book, Earth to Spirit: In Search of Natural Architecture, published in the United States by Chronicle Books in 1995, Pearson treats the reader to a round-the-world tour of buildings that illustrate these three touchstones. The brilliant color photographs, done by Pearson himself, show examples of buildings that are "respectful of nature, caring of health and nurturing to the spirit." The examples range from traditional dwellings such as yurts and tipis to the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Steiner to contemporary structures such as the airy, tree-filled headquarters of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York City.

In the preface of his book Pearson writes, "I began to travel and correspond widely to find (and photograph) more initiatives, large and small, which share this vision and to meet or contact the people who are pioneering them . . .

"Some of the projects are very strong on ecology, some radical in health terms, some powerful spiritually. Very rarely do projects successfully combine and balance two or even all three elements. When they do, one can see a glimmer of a future that is coming! The enthusiasm and commitment of their creators, however, are impressive. For many, the experiences have changed their lives and have empowered them to go still further."

Pearson's third book was published this year in the United States by Simon & Schuster. The idea of The Natural House Catalog came out of his first book, when readers wrote to ask where they could find a particular product or how to locate a certain organization. The Catalog is a reference tool for consumers who are interested in having homes that are healthy and friendly eco-systems. Chapters focus on soft energy, water, air, natural furnishings, recycling, feng shui, electromagnetic field management, non-hazardous cleaning products and more. At the back of the Catalog, there is a directory of 2,000 entries listing available goods and services in the United States, with detailed ordering information and business addresses.

In Pearson's home country of England, EDA has some 700 members, and its recognition is growing. Recently, the British Broadcasting Corp. gave its designer of the year award to two EDA members, Sally Daniels and Nev Churcher, who designed a school made of timbers and sustainable materials.

In addition, EDA is in contact with similar organizations in countries around the world, including Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Italy and a U.S. chapter in Sausalito, CA. According to Pearson, all of these organizations draw a substantial portion of their membership from students of architecture who are interested in persuading colleges and universities to add courses on ecological design to their curriculums.

"We are trying to influence the mainstream of design," says Pearson of EDA's charter. "Of course, one of the best ways to do that is to teach young people the importance of building with the environment in mind. To this end, we also are very much a grassroots organization. There are local groups that have their own meetings and visit local or distant examples of ecological design. Our goal is to network on an individual level."

Pearson also is the director of Gaia Environments, an eco- and healthy design consultancy in London. He is a founding member of Gaia International, an innovative group of eco-architects drawn from 12 countries who collaborate in eco-design competitions, courses and workshops. According to its statement of intent, "Gaia International stands for the balance and integration of the built environment with ecosystems towards a sustainable way of life for all species on this planet."

While this may sound like a tall order, Pearson believes the key to its success on levels small and large is simply a willingness to try.

"Designers must take a sympathetic view if clients want a natural house," he says. "If you put yourself in the right frame of mind, then you can apply the principles of eco-architecture, which are published in many places. Not having enough information is no longer an excuse."

The method of getting in the right frame of mind just might take its cue from nature itself: start small and grow. In daily living, says Pearson, one might start by recycling newspapers, then bottles and cans. This might then inspire the next step, which could be using low energy lighting or painting a room with environmentally friendly paints. Gradually over the years these smaller steps lead to more ambitious practices and their cumulative affect creates a natural Gaian lifestyle that interweaves ecology, health and spirit.

The Pearsons took 12 years to convert their old Victorian house in London into a natural, healthy, Gaian environment. They turned a loft into a bedroom with a skylight and built a balcony with a summer herbarium. ("Growing herbs on a window sill is a simple yet charming way to begin transforming the feeling of your lifestyle," says Pearson.) Sheetrock walls were replaced with natural, untreated timbers, while other walls were replastered and left unpainted. Deciduous vines grow in the front of the house to soften outside noise and absorb pollution. They removed plastics from the kitchen and revarnished the furniture with natural resins.

While some may find it remarkable that such a house could exist in an urban center such as London, Pearson believes that a city is exactly the place where such renewal must happen.

"Ecologically, we have all this urban infrastructure already in place. We just have to use it in a better, healthier way," says Pearson. "Cities are typically seen as a parasite, an organism that takes in resources and puts out waste. But if we try to understand the 'metabolism' of the city, then we can begin to find ways of turning the waste back into resources. This will be the challenge of the 21st century."

In addition to turning waste back into resources, rejuvenating our cities will require changes in city planning, says Pearson. Some ideas include curtailing road construction and installing pollution-free public transportation in its place; mixing residential and industrial zoning to encourage walking or biking to work; and using natural, local resources to construct homes and work places that are designed with the local climate and topography in mind.

For example, Pearson has seen new attempts at building with straw bales in parts of Arizona and New Mexico. The bales provide excellent insulation against the hot sun, are easy to build with and because more straw can always be grown, the material is sustainable. Furthermore, this material is not transported from far away.

"This is a perfect example of how we can use local materials to meet local climatic problems," says Pearson. "We should be working with nature to solve our design problems. Somehow Western culture has moved away from this basic principle."

While all of these ideas are good and practical, Pearsons says national governments will need to legislate incentives in order to make them happen. Pearson prefers incentives, which foster creativity, over outright laws that can be ignored, broken or done grudgingly. Currently, individuals and small to mid-size pro-active companies are leading the way. But for sweeping changes to occur, government must step in.

On a local level, city governments in Davis, CA, and Berkeley, CA, are supporting efforts of citizens taking steps toward urban ecology. In Davis, cooperative housing is clustered around community services, thus making these services more accessible without cars. In Berkeley, people are working to create wildlife habitats along formerly polluted creeks, and city planners have a program to create village-like living around the city, thereby making Berkeley less reliant on automotive transportation. These two cities, says Pearson, may well be models for what many towns and suburbs around the United States have the potential to become.

Stroud, England, formerly a small wool and cloth manufacturing town in the Cotswolds of southwestern England, has become that country's center for ecology activists. The town council has six members whose platforms focus on green initiatives. According to Pearson, the people of Stroud practice an ecological lifestyle in various ways that include organic gardening done by a cooperative arrangement, houses built by friends and neighbors, handcrafting, landscaping and constructing water flow forms.

The Pearsons have a 200-year-old limestone cottage on the north side of Stroud, which they renovated back to its original beauty. Years of paint and wood were removed to reveal the cottage's stone walls, which the Pearsons repaired with lime mortar. The sub-toxin, borax, was sprayed onto the remaining wood sections of the structure to stop any wood boring insects. Low odor, water based paints were used throughout the interior.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the cottage that was not renovated was the lack of a refrigerator. According to Pearson, the stone walls of the cottage are two feet thick, and an old-fashioned larder on the coolest side of the house was all there was for food storage. Pearson and his wife decided to keep their food in the larder as an experiment.

"The impact on our lives has been extraordinary," says Pearson. "Our diet is much healthier. We buy fresh foods rather than frozen. We eat hardly any meat, we've planted a garden and we have a compost heap."

Beyond their own lives, not having a refrigerator has impacted the Pearson's neighborhood, town and all of nature. They now shop neighborhood grocers, rather than a large supermarket, and are supporting local businesses and farmers. And not having a refrigerator of course means not releasing harmful chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. For the Pearsons, their cottage has become an example of how designing in harmony with nature can create a living environment that is healthy for body and spirit.

Today, Pearson sees himself as an agenda-setter working to spread the ideas of Gaia in an attractive way. "Many designers are put off by the early images of environmental homes because they look more like labs than houses," he says. "But there are so many products on the market now, no one need be aware that a home is environmentally friendly. Any design style, whether traditional or modern, can have elements of green design."

Designers unfamiliar with environmental design frequently come to him for advice on projects. In these cases, Pearson lets location guide his thoughts. While the problem of healing the environment may indeed be global, the solutions are local. Designers must know the region in which they are working -- its climate, soil and water -- and then build in accordance with nature.

Thus, in the southern United States, homes should have the shade of tall trees to shield the rays of the sun. If an area has strong prevailing winter winds, a designer might want to consider landscape as a way to reduce the affects of the wind.

"Our job is to work with nature, not try to beat it. Instead of being masters of nature, we as humans are an integral part of Gaia. This role is not a burden, but on the contrary it should be a source of well-being. Humanity's role is fundamental to achieving the Gaian lifestyle that interweaves ecology, health and spirit."

The following three points are adapted from the Gaia Charter, which was first published in Pearson's The Natural House Book. Pearson offers these for interior designers to consider on every project.

Design for harmony with the planet.

• Use of "green" materials and products that are non-toxic, non-polluting, sustainable, renewable, recycled and recyclable.
• Conservation and recycling of water. Conservation of electricity and energy, and use of "soft energy" sources, including sun, wind, water and biomass.
• Design interior systems to be "intelligent" and respond sensitively and efficiently to the occupants needs.

Design for health of the body.

• Creation of a healthy indoor climate and use of natural materials and processes to regulate temperature, humidity and air quality.
• Use of as much daylight as possible and less reliance on artificial lighting.
• Avoidance and protection against harmful radiation and electromagnetic fields from electrical circuits and equipment.

Design for peace of the spirit.

• Creation of interiors that are harmonious and healing to body and soul.
• Siting and design of interiors that are life enhancing and that empower the vital life force of ch'i of its occupants.
• Connection of the interior with Gaia and the rhythms and cycles of the natural world.

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