Source: https://www.wsp.com/en-au/insights/philosophy-and-practice-of-regenerative-design

The philosophy and practice of regenerative design

Australia | Monday, 5 December 2022

Nothing works in isolation. Changes or designs in one attribute can be positively improved by other actions or can have positive influence on other systems.

Regenerative design recognises this and is a big reason why Katie Fallowfield, Director – Sustainability is drawn to the discipline.

She says, “We need to think more broadly about our projects to understand how the system or asset we are designing fits within its context and the micro and macro scale. This lens enables us to identify all the possible opportunities we can create to drive positive outcomes.

“Regenerative design, when applied holistically, will result in environmental improvements, and can also lead to social equity and cultural strength. Regenerative design is a systems approach that makes us think about the impact that each part has on the whole, therefore it leads to benefits across environment, society and culture.”

Katie has worked on projects ranging from individual houses and small office fitouts to major high-rise developments, centre precincts and infrastructure assets, where she has adopted passive design in buildings, services efficiencies, reduced materials consumption, sustainable water use, along with the integrated systems-thinking that comes with regenerative design.  

Realising greater potential

“Regenerative design is about focusing on finding opportunities to make our developments improve on the current state,” adds Katie. “This is what currently motivates me to drive for better outcomes on all my projects.”  

Senior Sustainability Engineer, Zak Nicholson agrees. He has always had a passion for developing solutions that enable systems to operate to their full potential and purpose. This conviction has also played a strong role in his career where he advocates for building designs that are fit for climate and Country, and designing environments that actively benefit both people and nature.

Zak says, “The role of regenerative design and development is to determine which aspects of a living system to work on, in order to realise the greatest potential for systemic change. Equally important – and this is what makes regenerative development unique – is its ability to fuel collaboration and commitment among stakeholders.”

Codes, standards, and practices that we use to design and construct our built environment can restrict the possibility for a development’s full potential and purpose to be achieved. 

“When designing to minimum compliance becomes the objective of a project, considerations for the impact on the surrounding environment usually fall by the wayside,” he says.

Future Ready™ considerations of the regenerative approach

 
With regenerative design, we’re seeing an uptake in projects going beyond Net Zero and striving to be net-positive for water and carbon. As a result, there is greater collaboration and planning during the early concept stages of a project as the team work together to ensure sustainability aspirations can be achieved from the start.

There are three key factors to be considered when a regenerative approach is taken:

Seeing potential

• Seeing the world in terms of potential rather than problems is one of the key characteristics of regenerative development. Potential can be realised, whereas problems can only be solved. Potential looks forward, problem-solving looks backward.

Manifesting potential as a source of higher order value

• Potential is realised in the form of increasing ableness at higher levels of complexity. When something’s potential is manifested, it can generate higher order value. So, if we want to work on higher order value, then we need to be able to think about how we can generate new ableness in the larger, more complex system. 

Creating a vitalising energy field to enable the evolution of living systems

• Regenerative work is always oriented to the vitality that it will help produce—for the project underway as well as for the natural and community systems that it inhabits. In fact, regeneration starts with creating greater vitality—bringing in new energy, which becomes the engine for change. A vitalising field shifts the energy within a system and makes it possible to raise work to a higher order. That creates the conditions for altering both thinking and behaviour.

“Beyond the environmental aspects, we have seen regenerative design fuels greater considerations for social inclusivity and outcomes,” concludes Zak. 

“This has driven greater inclusive design/construction practices such as generating employment opportunities for disadvantaged and under-represented groups, Indigenous inclusion practices and procurement and workforce inclusion practices.

Katie rejoices that integration of services is a benefit we are seeing with the philosophy of regenerative design. She says, “Design and construction teams can work together to recognise that they can have more broad ranging impacts through their work. For example, building a community centre can provide avenues for the public to learn and integrate with nature, constructing new transmission lines can provide an opportunity for introducing Indigenous land management practices, and a new commercial office tower can provide space for growing vegetables, or plants that will filter the air.

“The key thing to recognise is that greater benefit can be realised through integrating our work streams with others, and that each problem does not present problems to solve, they provide opportunities to implement.” 

Glenroy Community Hub

WSP provided sustainability design services to the Glenroy Community Hub to encompass a high standard of environmental performance including low-energy use and high-comfort to support the health and wellbeing of users. 

The AU$30.1m Hub will become the new home for:

• Glenroy Library
• The Glenroy Memorial Kindergarten
• Maternal child health services
• A community health provider
• Neighbourhood learning and childcare services

A true embodiment of regenerative design, the Glenroy Community Hub is one of the first community centres in Australia to target Passive House-certification, as well as Petal certification from the Living Building Challenge. It has been designed to be an energy positive building, with goals of offsetting all operational greenhouse gas emissions.

Brenda Kingston, Director of Sustainability says, “WSP is extremely proud of our involvement in the Glenroy Community Hub. We look forward to continuing to work with the project team including Merri-bek City Council to monitor and tune the building to realise the design aspirations in practice.”

Living Building Challenge

This is a certification program and sustainable design framework that visualises the ideal for the built environment. It uses the metaphor of a flower because the ideal built environment should function as cleanly and efficiently as a flower.

The overall goal is that buildings become self-sufficient within their site, for instance through producing more energy than they use; as well as healthy and beautiful spaces which connect occupants through the creation of biophilic environments. 

Future proofing the place we live in to respond to climate change

With global temperatures projected to rise by 2.5°C in the next century, residential buildings and homes will need to become more resilient to withstand hotter temperatures, drier climates and more extreme weather events. This anticipated change in climate is a key consideration for all levels of government, and commitments are being made at local and international levels to address the impacts of climate change. 

“And that’s why we need to realise greater potential for our built environments through regenerative design,” concludes. “This includes the need to better understand climate change and its impacts on current building design practices and regulations.”

For more information on regenerative design, contact Katie Fallowfield.