Many years ago, environmentalist David Orr wrote, “As homo sapiens’s entry into any intergalactic design competition, industrial civilization would be tossed out at the qualifying round.” When I first read that, it struck me as extreme that Orr laid the whole mess at the feet of design. Then I wondered if design could fix it. This book is my answer.

“This book fills the cavernous gap between our awareness and understanding of ‘design thinking’ and ‘design doing’.” Len Schlesinger, Baker Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School

“There are design problems and there are human problems. Cheryl Heller’s genius is to see them as one and the same with the goal of building human capacity, not just buildings. This is the framework for designing the design process.”

—David W. Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Oberlin College

“The Intergalactic Design Guide is a call for entries to design our way out of the civilization we have created, by using our collective creativity to change the human condition. Readers will come away transformed by the realization that we can use the invisible forces of social design to create a future where we live in a state of mutuality with one another and nature. This is one of the most critical design books of our time.”

—Ivy Ross, Vice President of Google, Hardware Design #1 in New Releases, Green Books, Amazon

#1 in New Releases, Green Books, Amazon