About Oasis Design
Oasis
Design is a family owned design consulting and publishing business. We've been developing integrated designs for living better, cheaper, & more
ecologically since 1980.
The main focus for the first ten years was original designs for transport bicycles, camping equipment, systems for learning, and financial management. The focus for the last thirty plus years has been water, wastewater, ecological architecture, building codes, and policy.
I (Art Ludwig, the one on the left) am the main designer, though I draw on a wide network of colleagues and contractors. I've been doing ecological systems design as my day job for over thirty years. My partner helps with big decisions and editing, and my daughter with the office. My son reminds me to take breaks.
Our lives and this business are closely intertwined. Our own desire to live simply, well, and close with the earth is the impetus behind many designs, and most of the hardware and routines of our daily lives have sprung from and been influenced by our design work.
Art Ludwig's Bio (short)
Read Art Ludwig's bio, long version, instead
Art Ludwig has 42 years full-time experience with integrated design for water, wastewater, energy, shelter, human powered transport, finances, building codes, and policy. His specialty is complex, integrated "systems of systems." Art has studied and worked in 27 different countries, attaining fluency in 5 languages. He has consulted for the states of New York, California, and New Mexico on water reuse policy and building codes, and given dozens of lectures and workshops. He has developed numerous innovations which have been adopted worldwide, incorporated in building codes, etc., all of which he has published unpatented into the public domain. These include the Laundry to Landscape and Branched Drain greywater systems.
He designed his own education in Ecological Systems Design, graduating from UC Berkeley. At Berkeley, he developed the first cleaners specifically designed to be biocompatible with plants and soil, and founded a successful business to manufacture and distribute them. Art has authored numerous articles as well as the books "Water Storage" "Principles of Ecological Design," and "Create an Oasis with Greywater."
The past several years Art has dedicated approximately a thousand hours a year to public interest research and sustainabilty policy activism.