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 primary 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.

Jacqueline Pitts: Research, Horticulture, Design
In her second year of research coordination at the Whole Systems Research Farm Jackie also supports design work in the WSD Studio, facilitation of Whole Systems Skills courses and site development work via planting team management, water systems and other development. Jackie has an intensive and rich permaculture background framed by work in cutting edge sites across the contrasting climates of Nicaragua and Vermont, where she has supported the work of Project Bonafide and Whole Systems Design. 

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 propogate 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, Dean's Mtn. Farm Coordinator
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.

Chris Shanks: Design and Horticulture
Chris Shanks is one-part ethnobotanist, one-part horticulturist, and one-part community developer. He is co-director of Finca Bonafide in Ometepe, Nicaragua – a perennial nursery, permaculture educational farm and food security project. He has led permaculture design courses since 2001 leading courses in Hawaii, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the rural Bahamas, and Washington State. Chris’s unique background in regenerative land care has taken him across the planet where he has worked in centuries-old oak, chestnut and olive orchard-pasture systems in southern Spain to traditional forest gardening systems of the humid tropics. His work ensures that WSD projects reference and continue the best in plant genetics and polyculture that have been developed on Earth.

Keith Morris: Design and Horticulture
Keith is an orchardist, bee keeper, and permaculture educator. Since 2000, he has been delivering education on permaculture and designing and establishing an edible forest garden and ecological homestead in Johnson, Vermont. His work combines reforestation, wildlife refuge, and ecological restoration with community building and the production of healthy food, medicine, and energy. He is on the faculty of the Yestermorrow Design Build School and Sterling college and has lectured at UMass Amherst, UVM, UNH, Johnson State, and with many other schools and community groups.

Justin West, Msc: Project Management, Design, Horticulture
Graduating with honors from Schumacher College’s (UK) Masters program in Holistic Science, Justin was later hired by the school to design, implement, and integrate ecological practice and theory.  While establishing edible forest gardens at the college he was awarded a 2008 Winston Churchill Fellowship to study regenerative land practices in Colombia and the Brazilian Amazon.  These and other expeditions have taken him from Gaviotas in the semi-arid savannah of Colombia to backcountry travel and plant hunting in the highlands of the Caucasus Mountains and across temperate Eurasia.  Prior to studying in the UK he worked in various U.S. National Parks mapping and authoring descriptions of hundreds of vegetation communities.  Through this effort he came to understand that while land conservation is important, it is no substitute for (and is bolstered critically by) the development of productive, regenerative land practices in the places in which we actually live

Michael Blazewicz: Water Systems, GIS Analysis, Project Management

Michael has worked for more than a decade in the restoration of New England’s riverways and in watershed-level planning projects. His varied background as an organic gardener, certified permaculturist and educator, and aquatic ecosystems specialist helps ensure that WSD projects are rooted in and help regenerate on-site water systems. He also supports projects through GIS mapping, soil and water analyis, permitting and site construction. His talent in water systems analysis and design helps guarantee that WSD projects manifest the recreational and restorative qualities in healthy water systems.

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'.

Micah Whitman: Timber Framing, Natural Building and Design
Micah has built and restored timber frame barns, house frames, outbuildings, and community buildings across the Northeast and Western U.S. His natural building work has ranged from an adobe kindergarten structure in Patagonia to straw/clay, wood-chip/clay, and straw-bale structures, as well as earth-ovens. Micah holds a permaculture design certificate in Argentina, and completed the Heartwood School timber framing apprenticeship.

2000 Site Development Team
WSD's current team of site developers includes Jacqueline Pitts and Alissa White.

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.