WHY TAKE A PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE?
Permaculture training may just change your life. This training offers the opportunity to develop professional skills and provides valuable education to enhance your current vocation, prepare you for your next venture and give you inspiration about solutions that you can implement in your life at home. It is one of the few permaculture design trainings that match the schedule and tuition to the busy lives of urban professionals and full-time students. It is also a great way to meet and connect deeply with like-minded individuals that share your values.
There are many other wonderful PDC trainings in the region, but if you don’t have time to take two weeks off and would prefer to learn permaculture skills in the city that you live in and work on designs that can be implemented in your place (and learn design principles and methods that can be applied anywhere), then this might be the permaculture certificate training for you.
Through a mix of classroom discussion time, small group work and hands-on activities, we will explore methods of designing and establishing regenerative communities and economies. We visit and participate at several permaculture projects here in San Francisco and the Bay Area, observing and interacting with Permaculture principles in practice.
Some people take the training just to share the experience with an enthusiastic group of like-minded community and meet new friends. Join us and help build a healthy and happy community based on a common vision of harmony with nature and each other.
We start with the standardized Permaculture curriculum and add onto it insights and strategies for applying Permaculture to the urban setting. This lengthens the course to a degree, we do not omit any of the standard materials.
ACTIVE DESIGN COURSE
To deepen the opportunity to build design skills, participants work in small teams producing a design. Over the years, our students have designed public and private spaces all over San Francisco and the entire Bay Area.
Throughout the course, we will share with you the tools and strategies required to complete the design which culminates in the final presentation at the completion of the course.
PDC SYLLABUS
The UPISF Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) training is based on the internationally “standardized” 72-hour format explicated by Bill Mollison in the 1980’s. The 72-hour training, based on the Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual (Mollison), though commonly acknowledged by permaculture teachers around the world as a base from which to work has no rigorous content standardization (there is consistency in content categories/chapters and semantics) and as such one finds slight (sometimes not so slight) differences from teacher to teacher and course to course.
UPISF has, firstly, partially re-organized the 72 hour training by combining certain segments (e.g., looking at designing human settlement (especially structures and food production practices) in the Tropics, Temperate and Drylands climate zones comparatively instead of in their respective climate zones separately) and, secondly, augmented the 72 hours with some time to focus on urban/central city core application of permacutlure principles as well as specific techniques and strategies appropriate for San Francisco Bay Area. .
It is also the case that in any PDC the examples, techniques and strategies demonstrated typically reflect the climate zone and region of the site of the training. Therefore one can expect to see an emphasis on demonstrations and hands-on training applicable to temperate, nearly sub-tropical and semi-arid, coastal climates and, urban scale applications in particular in a UPISF training.
Finally, we also require a practicum – a group design project where we invite participants to apply their design training on an actual site and present thier work back to the class for feedback and constructive critique.
Permaculture Philosophy and Underlying Assumptions
The Permaculture Ethics (DM 1.2)
Land use ethics (DM 1.3)
Concepts and Themes in Design (DM 2)
Permaculture Principles Summary (DM 2.3-2.10)
Permaculture in urban environments (Permaculture One 10.1, 10.2)
Permaculture as Accounting (DM 1.2)
Design Process Model
Design Methods
Design Tools
Drawing Tools
Mapping tools and techniques
Additional assessment techniques
Patterns (DM 4)
General observable pattern forms
Problem Solving
Climate (DM 5)
Classification of climatic zones
Continental, maritime, landscape effects
Global weather systems -flow patterns driven by the sun
Climate as limiting factor in vegetation
Precipitation
Role of trees/vegetation in climate modification
Wind
Microclimates and how to influence them
Trees and their energy transactions (DM 6)
Wind effects
Light/Temperature
Precipitation
Forests
Perennial Agriculture
Patterns of Permanent Agriculture
Food Production Techniques and Strategies from the 3 Climate Zones
Designing Guilds and Polycultures
Perennials, Cultivars and Planting Plans
Water
Hydrologic cycle
State of global water cycle
Watersheds
Design for Water Supply
Water Storages
Infiltration Earthworks
Cisterns
Designing for Water Conservation
Conserving water in the garden
Current home use and conservation
The Ecosystemic effects of water solutions
LID
Soils
Introduction to Soil (DM 8.1)
Soil and health (DM 8.2)
Soil structure and texture (DM 8.3, 8.4, 8.5)
Plant nutrients
Remineralization
pH
Soil Composition
Soil food web
Plant indicators of soil
Soil rehabilitation and difficult soils
Building soil
Maintenance of soils
Soil Toxicity
Myco-Permaculture
Compost teas
Compost Strategies
Housing and Structures
Green building
Natural building
Low Energy Building Design Principles
Material Selection
House design
Passive Solar
Earthworks
Cost and ethics of earthworks
Stacking Functions with Earthworks
Planning Earthworks
Planting After Earthworks
Slopes
Types of Earthworks
Moving the Earth
Human Settlement Design
Natural Building
Energy
Energy Basics and Definitions
Supply and Demand Analysis
Supply Renewable and Diverse
Demand Side Conservation and Efficiency
Appropriate technology
Aquaculture
`Permaculture Life Design
Alternative Global Nation
A New United Nations
Bioregional organization
Trusts and Non-Profit Structures
Economics and Currency Strategies (DM 14)
Worker owned cooperatives
Design Presentations
Feedback
Review
Where do we go from here