Designing with Nature. AVAILABLE NOW!
To begin with, exploring nature and designing ran on separate tracks. Until I was 29, the hills were pretty much all I did. A decade of haphazard study got me an architecture degree, while driving cabs, pumping gas, washing dishes and working in orchards funded my outdoors trips. Design came later, and separately. This book is about the years when the two finally met — and what I've been trying to work out ever since.
"Inspirational! I have not read anything quite like this. It will live on my coffee table, where I and others will regularly delve and be inspired."
— Bruce McIntyre, Founder of Macpac
The projects
Designing with Nature brings together thirty projects developed over two decades across Aotearoa New Zealand. Conservation experiences for children across sixteen national park and other conservation sites, that then morphed into DOC's Kiwi Guardians. Wetland and river restoration on working farms. Trail strategies from Taranaki to the Mackenzie Basin. A landscape vision for vineyards and dairy farms. A volunteer programme caring for our backcountry hut network. Storytelling with Te Araroa.
What connects these projects isn't a design style or a method. It's a question: what becomes possible when you stop treating nature as the backdrop for design and start working with and for it?
In the hills
Each chapter opens with a personal story from my time in the backcountry — a 130-day solo traverse criss-crossing the main divide, an avalanche near Mount Brewster, a moment on Aoraki when I understood something I hadn't been able to put into words. The projects grew from those experiences, and from years of teaching design and working with students who hadn't yet learnt what wouldn't work.
The book doesn't resolve the questions it raises. Rather, it opens them further.
Want a look inside? Read the opening chapters here.
What's inside
330 pages, rich with photographs, maps, field sketches, and design drawings. Thirty projects across a range of scales and landscapes — from a single wetland on the banks of Te Waihora to a strategic design for Antarctica's ice-free lands. The writing is direct and personal, not academic. There's a short bibliography at the back for those who want to follow the thinking further.
Projects include Landscape Planting at Ararira Wetland; Wild Heart Project (a volunteer experience for international visitors); Love Our Huts (a volunteer maintenance initiative for Aotearoa's backcountry hut network); and work on the Ōtākaro Avon River, Taranaki, Waikato, Te Manahuna Mackenzie Basin, and more.
The final chapter doesn't close the book. It asks what a better conversation with nature might actually sound like — and how we all need to be part of it.
"A wonderful read! Full of life and creativity, Mick weaves his unique design vision like a supplejack through the forest."
— Caro McCaw, Professor, Otago Polytechnic School of Design
"A philosophy not just to work with but to live by. Designing with Nature invites us to explore the endless possibilities of collaborating with nature — surely a healing, hopeful journey for us all."
— Kennedy Warne, Founding Editor, New Zealand Geographic
“Mick Abbott is New Zealand’s foremost leader in designing experiences that connect people with nature. A compelling read!
— Lou Sanson, former Director-General, Department of Conservation
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