Ecosa Institute

Ecosa Institute sets the desperately needed paradigm shift in motion! Holistic. Integrated. immersive. Inspiring. An invaluable learning experience.

“Ecosa Institute influenced my life by giving me the opportunity to explore my creativity in making designs and arts while thinking and analyzing how to make a better place in a sustainable manner. The world is full of surprises, and I’m starting to see every detail and how we can truly make a better world by creating sustainable designs. Thanks to Ecosa Institute I firmly believe that anybody can be successful by working towards one world, one humanity, and one family, so that together we can be the change we want to see in the world!”

-Alejandra Gaytán Téllez-

I attended TedXVail that Ecosa had a presence with Tony Brown giving the talk. I hope more people learn about this important organization.

Ecosa was one of those experiences that you don’t fully realize everything you got out of it until you’ve packed your bags and headed out on your next adventure. Everyday in the program was filled with new learnings, discussed or debated amongst your fellow cohort, guest speakers, and teachers. Whether knowingly or not, everyday outside the program you apply bits and pieces of those those discussions...and those bits and pieces add up!

When I reflect on my time at Ecosa I feel beyond satisfied knowing it was time well spent discovering a better approach to thinking and gaining memories that will last a lifetime.

I am deeply thankful that I had the opportunity to addend the Ecosa Institute. The intensive ecological design curriculum challenged me and my cohort to work together and look at current world challenges as solvable design problems both at the macro and micro scale while first starting within our personal social and environmental relationships. How do we work together towards the betterment for all creatures living and non living in support of hyper complex interworking systems? Ecosa aims to point one in that direction of understanding with a full semester of motivating presentations with Ecosa faculty who have been and are doing beautifully impactful work in their fields of expertise. This one of a kind opportunity to collaborate with so many motivational humans in an intimate educational setting while in the classroom and on the field offered me a dynamic range of eye opening experiences provoking a profound package of learning that I will continue to unravel and integrate and be thankful for.

I use my Ecosa education daily as a consultant to Foundations and non-profits. As an older student, Ecosa helped me to narrow my professional focus while expanding my world view.

Ecological design at its finest. The principles taught at Ecosa can be applied to any field; I currently work as an electrical engineer and I use the skills and ideas I learned at Ecosa daily in my engineering work. The program asks you to take your own life and examine it under the lens of nature. I think my semester at Ecosa was the singly most impacting and lasting educational experience I have had so far in my life. I am grateful to Tony, all the staff and guest lecturers, and my peer group for teaching me things about the world, myself, our communities and our place in it.

The Ecosa Institute is a special place where small groups of students come together for a very intensive semester of multi-faceted learning. The time is condensed, but the lesons resonate. Ecosa partners with instructors from around the country to contribute to their students' depth and breadth of knowledge. I am deeply grateful to Ecosa for increasing my awareness in design and teaching me so many more lessons.

I've always been impressed with the creative work that goes on at Ecosa! The students are amazing and the design concepts they create are always inspiring. Keep up the good work!

Fantastic institution - they really have a refined, mature sense of ecological design and sustainable architecture, while keeping their eyes directed towards the future of eco design and green building practices.

The ECOSA Institute is an exceptional Non-Profit, offering leading edge training to people of all backgrounds in Sustainable and Regenerative Design. This program has inspired students from around the U.S. and the world to look hard at our future and make the best decisions possible for our built and non-built environments. Bringing in some of the top experts in architecture, urban planning, and sustainable design from around Arizona and beyond, the Total Immersion program is the finest intensive Sustainable design course of its kind.

I totaly recommend Ecosa if you are interested in sustainability and building resilliant communities. I attended the summer Permaculture course and Fall semester 2009 at Ecosa.

At Ecosa I got an education on a variety of methodologies, practical solutions and design principles related to ecological design which I have been using in every project I have worked on since. Furthermore, I had interesting community experiences, site visits and practical experience opportunities with professionals and peers. The desert environment and location is also a great benefit to the program. Part of the success of the program is the immersion in the community and the functional solutions you are exposed to. You will learn a broad spectrum of information-solar, building materials, LEED info, Permaculture, design, beg. drafting, model making, ecology, biomimicry, biophilia etc. I can't stress enough that the amount of information you get in the integrated curriculum through field trips, experiences, and professional exposure. Not to mention going on a wilderness survival excursion with Cody Lundin! Party On.

The design problems are interesting and I especially enjoyed working for clients. We designed a Kenyan village complete with agriculture, economic development opportunities and fish farms , and a re-design of a Waldorf Charter school in AZ. There was not an architect in the bunch, but we had enough information and a strong collaborative effort in making the projects successful. You can see current projects on the website. It was nice being able to experiment with radical sustainability with a receptive clientele. My inspiration and systemic approach to sustainability are from Ecosa.

Another benefit is the people you meet (and the Alumni network, which is growing!). I have dear friends that I met and have kept in contact with through Ecosa. We also met "eco" professionals in all stages of their careers who are willing to engage.

This is an interdisciplinary program. You will get what you put in. There are no grades etc.

Overall Ecosa offered a wonderful platform to help inform my decision making process and on how to focus my career in sustainability. After Ecosa I am on the path to becoming a community & regional planner. I now have a deep context in which to build my career.

Ecosa is a wealth of experience and wisdom, new techology and ancient solutions. It is a hub for people to connect and learn and share.The ever changing tribe is slowly reaching across the planet sharing its wealth and mission and passion for the planet. Join the Ecosan tribe, become an active citizen of spaceship earth, realize our true human destiny. Long Live ECOSA

Ecosa Institute gave me an education I could never have had anywhere else. The semester was multidisciplinary, interactive, and always engaging me with new ideas and concepts. Ecosa gave me personal access to professionals that are leading the field of regenerative design and took us to exemplary ecological projects across Arizona. The semester program pushed me to my comfort zone just enough to ignite epiphanies in my environmental studies, and the lessons learned here have changed my practices in work, school, and at home. This was the most transformative experience I've had in my collegiate studies.

Escoa are training the future generation in Sustainable Design on how we need to use less resourses and harness creativity in developing products and buildings that bring balance and commiunty together in a wholelistic way.

The Ecosa Institute was an amazing experience. I cannot recommend the program enough. It was a powerful catalyst in my life. I learned so much in a short amount of time, and worked with projects that have made a difference in the world already. I continue to maintain relationships gained through the experience and am considering returning for the Ecosa Plus Program sometime in the future.

My son was a student at Ecosa and I want to say that his hands on experience gave him a better understanding of what direction her wants to pursue in life. The experience was excellent and very worthwhile.

I was one of the founders of Ecosa in 1999-2000 and built the organization up until I left in 2005. I still go to local Ecosa events and see that Ecosa is sill one of the most progressive and cutting edge sustainable design education non-profits I am aware of. The students I have met and the work I have seen is consistently top notch. The personal conversations I have with the students there always confirms that Ecosa is changing peoples lives and bringing a new ethic of integrity and quality of work to the future problem solvers and designers of our world. Not only this, but Ecosa has managed to expand its outreach and affect in a down economy by adding a professional design arts studio as well that is integrated with the non-profit educational arm of the institute giving students real world experience. THis is true education. Its not the big institutions that need support and recognition, its the smaller ones, like Ecosa, that are able to respond quickly to our changing world, and that are free from large beurocracy to change and experiment with appropriate and timely pedogogy, organizations like the Ecosa Institute.

This experience really changed my life. I feel very connected with the alternative/ecological design world. My professor, Antony Brown, especially inspired me through his knowledge, background and positive energy. I would do this program again in a hot minute.

Ecosa was a wonderful educational experience. A collection of like-minded students and professionals in pursuit of environmentally conscientious design strategies. The caliber of professionals we had as teachers and lecturers was absolutely phenomenal; an experience that has been inspirational in my career and made (who I expect will be) lifelong friends.

This program has changed my life. It is a school whose radical philosophy is revolutionizing the design field. If all of the other architecture schools required this program we would have a very different society. This program strives and succeeds in creating a much better relationship between humanity and the environment.

As a graduate of Ecosa, I've found the material and design process to be leaps and bounds ahead of what I've encountered in the

I am a proud alumni of the second graduating class and can state with confidence that my experience at ECOSA has enriched my career and life tremendously.

Proud alumni to an amazing establishment. My training at ECOSA revolutionized my approach to life and practice in field of specialty. The program left me empowered to share my experience others.

I cannot say enough positive things about Ecosa to convey the worth of the education I received during my time in the program. I built a more holistic understanding of sustainability and how we might achieve it during my time at the institute than in my four years as an environmental studies major at a large university. Ecosa is committed to true, deep green solutions that really get at the root of the issue and change it for the better. Their non-linear approach to education that is heavily experiential engages all five of your senses to understand our current dilemma. With an understanding of the problems at hand Ecosa then teaches you to literally think differently when crafting solutions so to break free of our problematic paradigms of the present. In a intimate setting the program provides the opportunity to rub elbows with the pioneers and rising stars of the sustainable design field such as Sim Van der Ryn, Pliny Fisk, David Orr and Steve Badanes to name only a few. I would highly recommend the Ecosa experience to anyone who wants to make an impactful change for a better future, no matter your field of emphasis.

ECOSA is an educational experience that far exceeds the typical university experience. It gets you to think about the world and your place in it, in a way that enables you to become a better designer. Highly recommended!

Ecosa was a great learning environment for me. I knew I needed to learn more about sustainable design in-between undergraduate and graduate school, and this was the perfect fit for me. I am certain that the studio project was a big reason on why I was accepted into the numerous prestigious graduate programs that I had applied to. I can't say enough good things about this program, I am a proud alumni.