Surreal Studies: Biophilic Design for the Anthropocene.

My concentration is titled Biophilic Design for the Anthropocene.

The rationale begins with outlining the urgent need for a re-alignment of values in the modern world.


Background/WWU beginnings

I was born in Portland, Oregon and was given the last name Hawthorne in part because of being born in the Hawthorne district. My parents bought a turquoise school bus when I was one and a half and moved it out onto their friends’ property near Goldendale, WA. In the next few months they found and bought 80 acres nearby, in a deep canyon with a creek running through. The land is forested with oak and pine. I learned to walk on the uneven rocks, rock yoga. I grew up with a big family; my parents split up when I was three and they both found partners and got married in the next few years. My mom got her BA in metalsmithing and taught both my dad and my stepdad to make jewelry. My dad is a writer and my stepdad was a sculptor before learning jewelry so they both brought their own skill sets to their emerging crafts as well. I traveled with my parents a lot when I was little because they would go to fine art festivals around the country selling their work.

I only visited two universities before choosing where to go: Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and Western Washington University. Having always lived in a rural area I felt like I wouldn’t be happy in the center of Seattle in all the concrete. When we went north and toured Western’s campus I was immediately enamored by its expansive green campus
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I had been involved in community theater for a number of years growing up and thought I would pursue acting in college. I took a variety of theater classes in my first two years but as I explored other classes and departments as well I discovered that I really loved the introductory biology and geology classes, the two anthropology classes I took, and then Sustainability Literacy 1 really helped me to solidify what I want to focus on in my work and life. I grew up with an environmental ethic and had done a fair amount of self-study on topics related to sustainability but in Sustainability Literacy I I was introduced to fundamental concepts such as systems thinking as an approach to problem solving. Systems thinking is fascinating, essentially trying to understand how things influence each other within a whole, or how different systems themselves interact with and influence each other. I also learned more in-depth about sustainable design, urban development, and sense-of-place and its implications for sustainable action.

I wrote in a final synthesis paper for the class, “I now carry with me a developing sense of place, an appreciation of the multifaceted approach of systems thinking, and an even greater faith in the power of design and planning. The ideas presented in this class came at a really good time and made me realize that I want to study sustainability to a greater degree and with an interdisciplinary approach, as well as pursuing design and art and continuing to explore Bellingham and the surrounding area to gain a deeper sense of place and hopefully inspire others to do the same.”
I took this class when I was first thinking of joining Fairhaven College, and it really helped me solidify the direction I ended up going. I am really inspired by the work of science writers and people who are doing the work of communicating and translating between the realms of different professional disciplines and the popular sphere. I realized that I want to use design to educate more people about concepts in sustainability as well as promote ecological living.

Finding Fairhaven
I applied to Fairhaven College and began my studies there in the fall of 2014. I’ve always had pretty strong writing skills and my Fairhaven 201A professor made a comment in my evaluation that the in-class exercises revealed an awareness of and interest in complex issues of social justice. I had always done very well in a traditional classroom setting with lectures and tests and I found the Fairhaven environment of discussion and discourse to be a more engaging and challenging way of learning. In Fairhaven I found myself striving harder to learn material because I always had to present it or think about it through a critical lens. Through Fairhaven I’ve been able to create my own educational path, and because of that I feel like I am empowered now to create my own career.
In looking back over my written evaluations from Fairhaven I see some recurrent themes, both positive as well as constructively criticizing. Various professors noted that I was good at articulating myself, had strong writing and discussion skills and well-developed ideas. In my evaluation from FAIR 101A I had stated how I knew that I wanted to help integrate nature into human society more deeply but I didn’t know how to manifest it yet. While I was excited to build my knowledge and skill sets in school, I also really felt the need to travel and experience more of the world before continuing to define myself through writing the concentration. In 2015 and 2016 I was mostly not in school; I was traveling and also dealing with some tough family stuff. These experiences absolutely shaped my college experience, and for the last two years I’ve felt sort of between worlds, not fully engaged in my college community but also not fully pursuing my career path after school, because I kept going back and forth between school and work and life.

I do, however, feel that I’ve completed the compelling course of study I set out for myself in my concentration and that I am leaving the university environment rich with knowledge and new skills that I am already applying to my life’s work. In my evaluation for the concentration seminar my instructor wrote; “Your writing skills are strong, and your ideas for the themes of your concentration were well established early on, even if the final text and course list took longer to gestate. Nonetheless, you’ve clearly demonstrated yourself capable of identifying an academic vision for yourself and carrying it out.”

In my self-evaluations I noticed that I critiqued myself over and over again for procrastination/time management and lack of communication with instructors. These were the consistent weaknesses I noted and these were confirmed by my professors as well. I also wrote about my strengths and progress. The ability to articulate myself, be open to new learning, add constructively to class discussions and critically bring together learning threads were all strong suits I noted and which were confirmed by instructors’ feedback. Through Fairhaven I’ve been able to create my own educational path and because of that I feel like I am empowered now to create my own career.

Expanding Horizons
My financial aid needed to be used within five years of graduating high school so off I went to college the fall after leaving High School. I knew early on that I wanted to travel internationally much more and wished I had taken a gap year before going to University. Nevertheless, life happens and I found myself lucky to have the opportunity to travel abroad for the first time (besides being in Canada) in the winter of 2015. Since then I have been to Japan, Bali, Brazil, China, South Korea and Taiwan. I have spent my summers working and saving money. I’ve made jewelry and kept the money for travel, and for the last two years I’ve lived on my friend’s futon in her living room so I can pay cheap rent and save my money for traveling back and forth between Bellingham and the Columbia River Gorge, where my partner lives and where I work for his family’s winery and tasting room.
I feel so lucky to have been able to travel this extensively, to have had the the privilege to explore, and take the time I need. I reveled in the journeys and came home inspired by ideas, people and places I had encountered. The rich cultural, historical and and culinary traditions of East Asia have completely captivated me and I want to travel much more extensively in the region after graduating. Traveling really helped to strengthen my sense of social responsibility and definitely impacted my education and sense of identity. Home is infinitely expanded, and I can’t help but feel a part of something much greater than the sum of its parts.

Concentration and Important Classes
My concentration feels truly interdisciplinary, with important courses coming from departments like Huxley College of the Environment, the International Studies Department, Anthropology, Recreation, the IDEA Institute, and of course Fairhaven College Itself. I came to view Fairhaven as a sort of organizing structure for my education, and my two minors (Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Sustainability Studies) as ways of learning in-depth about environmental issues and how to solve problems, identify opportunities and build teams.

My concentration is titled Biophilic Design for the Anthropocene. The rationale begins with outlining the urgent need for a re-alignment of values in the modern world. Loss of biodiversity is one of the most long-lasting detrimental effects humans are causing and I chose to focus on this key aspect because it relates to every other instance of environmental and social ills. The guiding principle, or my central ethic/ideology is biophilia, which is the instinctive and primal love of the natural world and of the living organisms we evolved with. I draw upon the school of Deep Ecology which believes that nature should be viewed as having its own intrinsic value and right to exist beyond considerations of its utility to humans. It took me a little while to realize that my path in life was really clear to me all along and was centered on the love of nature and the feeling of closeness/intimacy with the biosphere.

The three thematic areas I utilized are conservation, design and global citizenship. The idea is that it is imperative that we conserve and promote genetic and species diversity (conservation), while learning to live in a globalizing world. I made the case that since design is so ubiquitous in shaping our lives, it is one of the most powerful tools for making the shift to a resilient and biophilic society. Designers, working in conjunction with business and political leaders have huge impacts on how we live our lives, and the impacts we have on the planet. I found a synthesis of my past, my passions and skills and have been able to conceptualize how I can utilize this skillset to improve the world I live in. In my concentration proposal I was able to articulate many of the ideas I’d been formulating over the course of my college career. One excerpt reads:

“I think in many ways we are going through an identity crisis as a species, and looking for ways to define our shared humanity and the relationship with our planet. Global citizenship is the idea that one’s identity transcends geography or political borders and that responsibilities or rights are derived from membership in the broader category of humanity. Economic, cultural and political globalization are leading to an era in which more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that they are members in a global community. Empathy as a tool for solving problems is an infinitely scalable model and we have more access than ever before to communities around the world. As a designer I know that I need to support ethical supply chains and promote the idea of global citizenship.”
Biologist E. O. Wilson has been somewhat of a guru for me in terms of future thinking. I appreciate his pragmatic optimism and visionary approaches to conservation and the bottleneck our species is moving through. In his book, The Future Of Life, he uses the term biophilia, which he defines as the instinctive love of life, to make a case for bioethical reasons for conservation and preservation. This term became the basis of my rationale and the key component of my concentration’s title. I gained a sense of confidence after discovering this term and the understanding that the need to protect life is fundamentally selfish, but not in a detrimental way. Instead, I think biophilia can help us design spaces that incorporate nature and bolster ecological, social and economic elements in systems. We need to work on raising the standard of  life for all humans while also saving and promoting as many other species and ecosystems as possible. This book helped me to structure my rationale around the need to conserve biodiversity.

Visioning Sustainable Futures was a key class in the development of my concentration and its thematic areas. The most fundamental thing I learned in this class is that motivation should be driven from positive emotions, instead of negative ones which tend to paralyze us with fear and inaction. The conversations we had in class allowed me to understand other people's incentives for sustainable action as well as build upon and test my own ideas. This class in particular helped me to orient myself, to see that everything I care about begins with a reverence for the natural world. My motivation is very personal; I need to surround myself with beauty, and I believe that beauty is synonymous with ecological integrity.

I am very grateful that I took the Fairhaven Visioning Sustainable Futures class, in which Danica Kilander came and spoke about the Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor program. Danica is one of those rare people who make you really stop and listen, and I immediately got excited by the prospect of the entrepreneurship program. It seemed like a perfect fit because I knew I wanted to own my own business and have the autonomy of a self-employed lifestyle. The entrepreneurship and innovation program (IDEA Institute) promotes putting empathy at the center of the design process, emphasizing that communication and understanding is the key to discovering solutions and products that are really needed and wanted by consumers. If designers approach their task through the lense of empathy, it means they are forced to understand a problem or a desire instead of merely supposing what might be useful or wanted. The IDEA program taught me not only the empathetic design approach following scientific methods of hypothesis testing and data gathering, but also the invaluable skills of teaming, communication, giving and receiving feedback, and public speaking and pitching skills. The class has also taught me to work with an incredibly diverse set of people and to realize the importance of community and nurturing connections.

This type of innovation and organization demands a change in perspective, and one of the easiest ways to gain this is by working interdisciplinarily and interacting with communities we hope to serve. Putting empathy at the center of the design process demands that we look to the principles of biophilia and the deep ecology of the conservation ethic as well.

Social Responsibility
Social responsibility, in my mind, must be seated within the larger picture of our global biosphere. I think it is a moral imperative that business be aligned with biophilic principles promoting ecosystem and human health. I believe my role is to use the methodology of systems thinking and empathetic design to drive my entrepreneurial ventures and help grow the businesses of the people I work with in alignment with those principles. The growing networks of communications, goods and services provide an evolving landscape in which business can be leveraged for social and environmental justice through innovative design approaches.

Early in my college career I took a few anthropology courses which taught me the language of cultural relativism and responsibility in researching and interacting cross-culturally. I learned about emic and etic perspectives and methods in these classes, and in more depth in classes like Fairhaven’s Curers, Clients and Culture. In the Fairhaven Social Relationships and Responsibilities class I was introduced to the field of whiteness studies and the historical process of the racialization of history in the West. The knowledge of this historical arc is essential to understanding the modern context of race in society and gaining an informed and empathetic solidarity with the sufferers in the structure of racial hierarchy
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The Global Citizenship class I took through the International Studies Department was wonderful. It was mostly focused on how aid (both domestic and foreign) is carried out and which methods are more responsible and effective than others. We learned the language of helping, fixing and serving, asking questions, not assuming, not saving people but helping people find the resources and build the teams and community structures to be successful and resilient going forward.

I also think It is utterly ridiculous to try and make separate issues of environmental and social justice, and yet all too often the concerns of “environmentalists” and “humanists” come into conflict. For example, conservationists and preservationists often argue that people have to be removed from land for it to be properly conserved. This is an uninformed and imperialistic position, ignoring the presence of people on the land since time immemorial, living in more or less sustainable ways.
In the Ecotourism class I learned about the problems caused by the growing global tourism industry and also the prospects for sustainable tourism for development strategies that are less exploitative than extractive resource economies. I was able to visit the Makah Indian reservation and experience how they are utilizing community led tourism to their benefit, but also dealing with some negative impacts of more and more tourists coming every year.

Ultimately, I think social responsibility lies in the balance of solutions that serve people and planet.To acknowledge the pains caused by my forebears and to actively create opportunity and prosperity for the populations that have been marginalized and oppressed. This is my concept of social responsibility

Looking Forward; Plans, Goals and Opportunities
I feel so overwhelmed with opportunity, knowing I could readily walk into a career in the wine industry or in jewelry making because I have readily available mentors in those two fields. I love that I have always lived around entrepreneurs and value creators and I am excited to have more time to devote to the efforts of my team as well as my individual business pursuits.
My partner’s family owns a winery in the Columbia River Gorge called AniChe Cellars. They are diversifying and building another business called BoEm Farm, which will be a multi-faceted agritourism farm venture. I am helping them plan and research opportunities in the industry and will help put together a strategic plan for the next few years. We will grow the farm incrementally and plan on employing permaculture and other natural farming strategies with a focus on sound ecological management. We are starting to do AirBnB this summer and are growing our first cut flowers and establishing more growing space and perennial landscaping.

I also get to travel for the winery because we are beginning to engage in export markets and international trade shows. This is something I am very excited to do more of and I want to connect with artisans and bring back products to sell in our tasting room eventually as well. I also am going to be involved in managing our charitable giving as well as non-wine merchandising.
My individual work right now consists of building on the knowledge and skills I’ve learned in my concentration and using my designs to promote causes I care about. For a while that meant using recycled metal and natural objects in my jewelry designs, and I will continue to do this because it aligns with my ethics. Recently I’ve begun a project in which I’m advocating for visibility and positive identity affirmation for the Arabic Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) diaspora community in the US through Arabic language designs in my jewelry. I have Lebanese heritage and as I’ve been learning more about the Arab American population I’ve seen how much want there is for normalization and acceptance of MENA culture and the Arabic Language itself. Jewelry, like clothing, is very personal and very visible. It is definitely a way of showing identity, and I hope through my experiment for it to create some amount of dialogue.

My ultimate goal is to destroy the harmful dichotomies that pit humans against nature, bring people closer to the natural world, inspire citizen scientists, create spaces for reconciliation and healing and learning. Biophilia is the anchoring point. Conservation is the mechanism and global citizenship is an ideology for peace in the anthropocene.

All of those sound like lofty goals when I list them but I see no need to reduce the list. My motive is to promote and create places like the ones that have inspired me, places for exploration and cultural exchange. Places like the Outback Garden on campus, places like Instituto Inhotim in Brazil, botanical gardens and research institutes, places for citizen science and creative collaboration. Places for being in nature and learning about it and respecting it. Places for forest bathing, for hearing flowing water and seeing the light move through dancing leaves. Places that make people feel good, because they are alive and resilient.



“Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.”

― Edward O. Wilson




Surreal Hawthorne
Spring 2018
FAIR 403A
Summary and Evaluation