This paper examines the relationships between diverse technical design strategies and competing conceptions of ecological place making. It highlights the conceptual challenges involved in defining what we mean by calling a building “green” and outlines a social constructivist perspective on the development of sustainable architecture. The paper identifies six alternative logics of ecological design which have their roots in competing conceptions of environmentalism, and explores the ways in which each logic prefigures technological strategies and alternative visions of sustainable places. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the contested nature of ecological design for architectural education, practice, and research.

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Short 'product lives' and disposable packaging result in premature disposal of valuable resources. Industrialisation, mass production and global supply chains have resulted in a disconnect between people, places, materials and design. Upcycling is reuse of discarded materials which results in an increase in 'value'. We discuss the potential for creative upcycling to reconnect people with materials and establish cultures and communities of making. The reaction of the public to creative reuse is explored by creating a café structure made entirely from recycled materials, and this provides the starting point to consider the contexts in which upcycling occurs, the motivations for (and barriers to) reuse and upcycling, the potential benefits of upcycling in the context of affluent Western 'consumer' societies, and the scope for designers to imbue objects with the potential for creative reuse. We argue that designing to enable creative upcycling allows the future lives of objects to be contingent on context and culture, rather than being prescribed by the designer, with potential for widespread social, economic and environmental benefits.

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A rainfall anomaly time series for the Short Rains (September to December) on the Kenyan Coast (KCS) is derived for the period 1901 -84. On the year-to-year time scale a high degree of association can be seen between high/low extremes of a Southern Oscillation Index and negative/positive anomalies in the KCS series.The SOI-rainfall relationship is investigated seasonally with KCS lagging the SO1 series by one, two and three seasons. A decay of the correlation with increasing lag can be seen. When the time series is divided into 1901-42 and 1943 -84 the relationships are stronger in the more recent period. Some forecasting skill does seem possible using the June to August (JJA) SO1 to predict the September-December rains. While the 1901 42 period shows a skill not much improved from using a simple climatological forecast, the 1943-84 period shows a much stronger relationship. Possible reasons are discussed for the disparity between the two time periods, also evident in results from others parts of Africa and Asia. There may wcll have been a change in some underlying climate mechanism between the early decades of this century and the more recent decades.