Whole Systems Design is composed of an interdisciplinary team of land planners, ecologists, builders, and educators that live in their designs. We unify conventionally disparate fields to develop inspiring and regenerative places.

We differ from other designers in that we actually live inside of our work everyday. We don't work in class A office space; we live amidst the spaces, plants and ecosystems we design.  We build soil, tend to fruit trees, fix tractors, tweak wood stoves, sharpen axes, raise vegetables, fruit and fish, stack firewood, tune solar hot water systems, and learn from the innumerable ways one lives in a productive landscape across the seasons.  We could not deliver valuable site and building design and construction experience without practicing the content of our design on a daily basis.  Since the practice of modern architecture and land design is far removed from the consequences of its application it reliably produces dysfunctional spaces unfit for vibrant people and other living things. This distancing of designer from the designed is why these fields have continually lost relevance for the past 50 years.  Our practice is part of the design-build, owner-builder movement that is transcending the industrial process which has passed for 'design' for far too long.

Our currently active associates are featured below; we also utilize a team of craftsmen and planters and subcontract with a variety of specialists.

Ben Falk, M.A.L.D: Design Director
Ben developed Whole Systems Design, LLC as a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Life as a designer, builder, ecologist, tree-tender, and backcountry traveler continually informs Ben’s integrative approach to developing landscapes and buildings. His home landscape and the WSD studio site in Vermont's Mad River Valley serve as a proving ground for the innovative land developments featured in the projects of Whole Systems Design. Ben has studied architecture and landscape architecture at the graduate level and holds a master’s degree in land-use planning and design. He has taught design courses at the University of Vermont and Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum as well as on permaculture design, microclimate design, and design for climate change.  He serves on the Board of Directors and Faculty at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School.
 
Cornelius Murphy: Communications, Design
Cornelius worked as an associate designer in several California-based landscape architecture studios before coming to Vermont and Whole Systems Design. His professional experience ranges from private dwellings to community-based urban redevelopments. Cornelius holds a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, CA and a B.S. from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at Temple University. He supports WSD by synthesizing CAD and dynamic animation with hand drawing and other graphic media to produce compelling design communications.

Allan “Buzz” Ferver: Design, Horticulture, Project Management
Building on decades of experience in natural history, ornamental horticulture, landscape design and site construction, Buzz has become a leader in the field of ecological restoration, consulting on large-scale bioremediation and stormwater enhancement projects. Combining specialized expertise with broad-based experience - he can propagate hundreds of food plant species and operate heavy equipment with similar ease - Buzz practices truly holistic land development. He is on the Board of Directors at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School and has been teaching ecological design since 1970.

Kristen Getler: Learning Landscapes
Kristen is a school garden educator, garden program developer and organic vegetable grower. She designs and facilitates food and therapeutic garden programs for youth of various ages and backgrounds, with a focus on at-risk and developmentally-disabled youth. She has designed and facilitated youth and inter-generational garden programs in both school and hospital settings using gardens as context for learning and healing. Kristen completed the New York Botanical Garden's Horticultural Therapy Certificate Program and holds a BA from Brown University. She earned a Permaculture Design Certificate in Bolivia in 2003, and has worked with WSD for the past 4 years.

Adam E. Anderson: Research, Communications, Design
Adam's work has reached across a broad range of landscape architecture from public space conceptualizing and development working with a large firm in California, to edge pushing inquiry into the constantly evolving world of art and science in design, to design communications conveying humanistic and ecological design. 
 

Dave Johnson: Carpentry and Construction
A brilliant and diverse craftsman, Dave is as adept computing lines on a chop saw as he is hand hewing timbers, cultivating a bumper crop of oyster mushrooms, or putting up 2,000 pounds of potatos from his weekend 'garden'.
 
 
Jobs & Internships
Positions for employment and apprenticeship based out of our proving ground and studio in the Mad River Valley of Vermont are ongoing. Please see our Jobs and Internships page for more information.