The Pennsylvania countryside stretched before Will Hunter like a patchwork quilt of green and gold. He had taken a detour from a design conference to visit a quiet, wooded site that held significance to one of his heroes—Ian McHarg, the father of ecological planning. With McHarg’s seminal book Design with Nature tucked under his arm, Will felt as if he was about to walk into the pages of the text itself.
McHarg’s philosophy had first gripped Will during a late-night study session. “The Earth is our client,” McHarg had written, a phrase that struck him as both revolutionary and reverent. As an aspiring architect, Will was used to thinking of clients as people, but McHarg’s perspective reframed his entire understanding of design.
Walking into the woods, Will began to notice what McHarg had described so vividly—the layers of the landscape, each telling its own story. Beneath the towering oaks lay soft moss, and below that, rich soil teeming with life. Will knelt and ran his hands through the dirt. He remembered McHarg’s insistence that designers must read the land as a palimpsest, understanding its geology, hydrology, and ecosystems before imposing human ambitions upon it.
At a nearby hilltop, Will met a local ecologist who guided him to a restoration project inspired by McHarg’s principles. It was a wetland that had been drained for agriculture decades ago, now brought back to life. Native grasses swayed in the breeze, their roots filtering water and stabilizing the soil. A chorus of frogs echoed through the air.
“This,” the ecologist explained, gesturing to the thriving ecosystem, “is what McHarg envisioned. We didn’t just build here; we listened.”
Will opened Design with Nature and flipped to a familiar diagram—McHarg’s famed suitability analysis. He marveled at how McHarg had pioneered the use of overlays to assess land capabilities, layering maps of soil, vegetation, and water systems to determine the best uses for each area. The wetland restoration project was a testament to that method, an example of working with nature instead of against it.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, Will stood at the edge of the wetland, watching ripples form on the water’s surface. He thought about how McHarg’s work challenged designers to be stewards, not conquerors. “Design isn’t just about what we build,” Will realized. “It’s about what we leave untouched.”
