Systems designers have distributed object technology available to them, such as implementations of the OMG?s CORBA. However, object-oriented design methods mostly consider development of sequential systems. Few methods consider the problems of designing for distribution or give guidance to allow the benefits of distribution to be realised. This paper proposes the environmental object model and design method based on a containment hierarchy, with constraints on links between instances. The model and method promote the development of complex distributed abstractions, implemented as a system of CORBA servers. Throughout the paper, a case study of a distributed grouped diary service is used.