Eiffel Over

Tag: Daniel Wahl

  • Regenerative Design: a process not a thing

    Regenerative Design: a process not a thing

    As I continue my exploration of regenerative design in engineering, correspondents have said it would be helpful to gather examples of regenerative design. Templates that we can look at, imitate and integrate.

    From my reading of Wahl (see my recent post), I’m increasingly understanding regenerative design to be a process rather than a thing.

    Regenerative practice of any sort (in design, in education, in living…) is practice that leaves the ecosystem richer and better able to heal itself. It is practice that sees humans as a keystone species that play a unique role in helping their ecosystems thrive.

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  • Reflections on transformational innovation

    These are my reflective notes as I work through chapter two of Daniel Wahl’s ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures‘. My aim in this reading is to find clues as to what a set of principles for regenerative design for engineers could look like.

    Wahl introduces three types of innovation:

    • Sustaining innovation – that which keeps the current system working
    • Disruptive innovation – that which introduces new operating systems
    • Transformative innovation – that which is the ‘long-term innovation process of fundamental changes in culture and identity.

    He argues that if we want to achieve a transition towards a regenerative culture, it is this third kind of innovation that we need.

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  • Sustainability is no-longer enough

    Today I am sharing more of the thinking that went into my vision question for Hazel Hill Wood: what if we became a centre for regenerative practice?

    It is my view that sustainability has been captured by mainstream industry and politics as a smokescreen for business-as-normal. We now know that our efforts to sustain our ecosystems for the benefit of future generations has not been enough and that we now beginning a process of climate and ecosystem breakdown. 

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  • What does regenerative design mean for engineers?

    What does regenerative design mean for engineers?

    As I wrote in my last post, this summer I have been thinking about regenerative design, and what it means for engineers. 

    In the context of climate breakdown, the dominant paradigm in design is sustainability: design that seeks to sustain the quality of our existing ecosystem for the benefits of future generations. But as the latest IPCC report makes clear, our planetary systems are so depleted that even if we stopped putting carbon dioxide into the environment now, there is sufficient carbon dioxide in the environment to trigger significant temperature rises and ecosystem destruction. What we need now is to go further than maintaining the status quo and start regenerating our planetary ecosystems through our actions – this is regenerative design. 

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