A small, well-chosen kit for anyone practising the course's whole-brain approach to design - measure it, mould it, trace it, colour it in.
Stocked in Fibonacci quantities. Obviously.
All prices shown in USD.
For measuring dreams (and plans).
True sanctuary is organic and curved — there are few if any straight lines in it. As we battle the rectilinear, eventually we'll be measuring with curved rulers (haha). In the meantime, these rulers help daydreams turn real floor plans, great for your usual floor plan scales 1:50, 1:100 and easy to use smaller scales for your permaculture and site plans. Colour coded to help find the right scale.
Same soil. Different sculpture.
900g (2lb) per block of pure imagination. Never-dries-out oil-based plasticine, because good ideas shouldn't have an expiry date either. Squash it, roll it, un-make it, start again. It's the same lump of earth, endlessly becoming something new. (Sound familiar? That's the whole point of Design 101.)
When your white Pepy needs some pep.
The primaries, for the moments the plain lump needs a highlight, an accent, or a proper focal point.
No stress. No mismatched lids. Just colour.
Twenty assorted colours and no wrong lid. Nothing to mismatch, nothing to get "right." Your left brain can finally exhale. These are the pens for when the goal is play, not perfection.
See one version through another.
14 x 17" (approx A3), 50 sheets of smooth, see-through parchment - perfect for laying one version of an idea over another without erasing the first, especially good for multiple story homes! Trace a plan, adjust it, trace it again. Nothing's ever really gone, just layered. (Sound familiar? That's Design 101, on paper.)
For when guessing isn't a design strategy.
Your eyeballs think that's "pretty big." It's 3.2 metres. Because the analytical brain needs real numbers before the artist brain gets to dance. Pair it with the free app over Bluetooth and every measurement, area and volume calculation saves itself. POINT.CLICK. DONE. A natural partner to Lesson 3's space-sizing work.
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A computer is essential for this course. A tablet is not — that's exactly why the pens, the plasticine and the tracing paper are for sale above. You can sketch, sculpt and trace your way through every assignment with nothing more than paper, clay and your own two hands.
But, going digital is just easier. These are three I would genuinely put money on. Go handle them in a shop before you buy if you can — easpecially screen size and pen feel are personal
These are our recommended picks, not products we sell ourselves. The links go to Amazon, so Amazon handles all shipping, returns and warranty. Thank you for shopping here and supporting the cause.
Go big, or stay on paper.
14.6" of AMOLED canvas with the S Pen and a 25W charger already in the box, no separate pen purchase, no excuses. The biggest screen on this list, and about as close to a drafting table as you can carry in a bag.
Big screen, sane price.
A genuinely large 12.7" 3K display, with the Tab Pen Plus and a folio case both already in the box, at a price that won't make you wince. Nothing flashy, just a smart way to try tablet sketching without a four-figure commitment.
Alex's 2016 iPad Pro just had its 10th birthday. Still going strong.
There's something to be said for buying into a decade of longevity. This is the current 13" iPad Air, M2 chip, built for Apple Pencil Pro, if history repeats itself, it'll still be sketching floor plans in 2036.
Design 101 leans on a handful of real books, not because a course needs a bibliography, but because some ideas are better read slowly, in a chair, away from a screen.
As with everything else on this page, these link out to Amazon. Amazon handles the printing, shipping and returns. Thank you for shopping here and supporting the cause.
Why Design 101 started in kindergarten.
Hundertwasser believed straight lines were the downfall of humanity and that trees deserved their own rooms, ideas a five-year-old accepts instantly and an adult has to relearn. That's the whole premise behind Lesson 1. Read it to the kids in your life. Their creative DNA is still intact, ours just needs the reminder.
Hands-on, not just look-and-learn.
Dozens of real activities, not just pictures, for the kids in your life to make their own Hundertwasser-style art and start noticing curves over corners. Pass the whole-brain habit on early, so they never have to unlearn it the way this course asks the rest of us to.
The book behind the "why" of this whole course.
Bucky was an architect, geometrician and one of the great systems thinkers, decades before anyone used that phrase. His central case: Earth is a single, self-contained spaceship with no operating manual, and enough resources for everyone if we design and share rather than compete for them. Short, dense, and about as close as it gets to a founding text for the carbon-and-collaboration idea running under this whole course.
The book Lesson 2b keeps quoting.
Christopher Alexander's 1977 doorstop, all 253 patterns, Window Place included. This is the actual source behind DL2b and Assignment 2, so if you'd rather go straight to the primary text than a summary of it, here it is.
For the express version of the whole idea.
A short companion guide to Alexander's life and work, for anyone who wants the headlines before committing to the two doorstops either side of it on this shelf.
Alive buildings, not straight lines.
The philosophical prequel to A Pattern Language, and the closest thing to a mission statement for organic, alive design over rigid, rectilinear rule-following. If BREATHE.DESIGN.LOVE had an official reading list, this opens it.
Because sanctuary doesn't stop at the walls.
Garden farming, water systems, soil, the whole living system around the home you're designing. A natural extension of the course's carbon-and-collaboration thesis, applied to everything growing outside the windows.
For when the grid takes an unplanned holiday.
Thirty-three hands-on projects for water, power and basic shelter, for the nights you want to test how self-reliant your sanctuary actually is. A practical, low-key companion to the permaculture handbook above.