Oasis Integrated Design Consulting
Consulting on integrated desgin for architecture, structural engineering, and Landscape • Water Supply, Water Efficiency, Water Reuse & Treatment • Financial Consulting • Industrial & Product Design • Quantitative Analysis, Synthesis • Building Codes and General Plan Review • Expert Witness Service
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About Oasis Design consulting
Integrated design takes every relevant factor into account, adjusts elements and their interconnections to achieve the overall optimum outcome.
In these rapidly changing times, growing edge, integrated designs are more future-proof, higher performance, and have lowest environmental impact and cost long term. Most projects are either:
- Short, off-site consultations focused on one system
- Projects involving the design and construction supervision of several intertwined systems
- "Wholesale" engineering and technical implementation support for building and design professionals such as landscapers, engineers or architects on their projects
Usually more can be gained by improving the connections between systems than by improving the component systems. To this end, we can coordinate the specialists involved in a project to achieve a unified and optimized design consensus.
We excel at growing edge integrated design for complex and unusual environments. For example, a wilderness hot springs resort with several drastically different types of water, or a community with no water income at all for most of the year.
The earlier in the design phase you can involve us, and the more elements we can have input to, the easier and less expensive it will be to accomplish more overall benefit.
Willing user involvement enables designs to be more sensitive, elegant, and efficient. The ideal client wants to accommodate their lifestyle to better custodianship of earth's life support systems.
To get started, have a look through the information and links below, thenContact us.
Note that the number of inquiries we receive precludes lengthy unpaid preliminaries.
Good luck with your project!
Typical types of consulting jobs
Site assessment
Assess site features and make recommendations for water supply, wastewater reuse/ treatment, permit compliance, siting of structures and trees, privacy, with deliverables of a narrative, maps, and spreadsheet with calculations.
Typically a few to several days work, depending on the complexity of the site, including a site visit or off-site review ofSite evaluation forminformation from client.
Design water or wastewater system
Assess Site evaluation form information and design a water and/or wastewater system which is optimal for the context. Some clients save time by doing the design themselves and having me review it and give advice at points in the process.
Typically five hours to four days work.
Oasis Design house specialties
Most projects we do incorporate original designs. See for example: Adobe Safety Cottage, Oasis design specialties.
Lead designer/ design consensus facilitator
Coordinate all the players involved with a project to move in a unified way
towards the client's goals.
Delegate all the work I can, and do whatever can't be delegated.
Can span years and involve months of billed work, though some are as short as a few weeks.
Crafting policy
Write sections of building code, plumbing code, general plan, zoning ordinance, etc., with an eye to integrated design and an overall optimum outcome in a rapidly evolving future.
Expert witness
Provide compelling, well-researched testimony, often featuring quantitative analysis and compelling graphics, in cases that advance Oasis's core objectives; pro-sustainability, anti-waste or exploitation of natural and social resources.
Job selection filter
Because I have more project offers than time to pursue them, we turn most opportunities down. How do I decide which projects to take on? This is the filter I use. Most projects we take on have "Yes" answers to most questions:
- Is the project part of the solution? Is it high leverage for good? Does it fit with our highest purpose?
- Are our particular skills the best fit to the job? If it seems possible any other entity could do the job better, we will defer to them. (We=Art Ludwig, lead designer, and our guild of experts brought in project by project.Art Ludwig's bio)
- Is the project a good testing ground for new designs? Does it help blaze a pathway that others can follow? Virtually every job I take involves some advance to the state of the art. The ideal client is enthusiastic about supporting this. Note: We approach innovation conservatively and incrementally, so the probability of success is high. Generally we get results equal or superior to common practice from designs which have some aspect that has never been tried before (example: Eco village house). On the other hand, it is always more work to set up a new system than fit into an existing one, and the risk that it won't work as hoped is greater, also.
- Is the project likely to be successful? Is there an appropriate budget (not too high, not too low), adequate support, a feasible time line? Will we have enough time to see it through to completion?
- Would we enjoy and learn from the work and the people? Am we likely to have good relations and communication with the client and co-workers?
- Is there reward in proportion
to the energy invested? This is a deeper question than "how much
will we be paid?" One of the rewards of a lifestyle based on the principles of natural economics
is never having immediate pressure to take a job for the money. This question considers future return from
whatever we might learn and can reuse in consulting and publications, publicity,
advancement of activist missions, etc..
We look forward to hearing about your project and the possibility of working together.
