Eiffel Over

Tag: ReflectivePractice

  • Warp from the present to the future

    In a traditional loom, strong fibres are stretched out in one direction, through which a second set of perpendicular threads is tied in. These longitudinal threads are called the warp, and the fibres woven in between are the weft. Together they form the patterns in our fabric.

    The goal of regenerative design is for human and living systems to survive, thrive and co-evolve. This statement describes a future state – a vision for how different things could be. 

    But most of the people we work with, be they clients, colleagues or collaborators – are focused on the present. And if we are honest, so are we. If we were to ask ourselves what we think about most often, the answer probably we would be present-day concerns rather than distant aspirations. 

    Warp threads – linking present and future.

    As futures thinker Bill Sharpe helps us understand, the makings of the future are here in the present. 

    The key to bridging future aspirations and present concerns is use framings that are both relevant to today’s challenges and compatible with the future that we want to build. 

    These framings act as strong warp threads, running through the present and the future. Of the various strands of regenerative thinking, three threads stand out as links between the present and future.

    • Complexity – the character of the present and the future. The present is very complex, and it’s not about to become any less so. Regenerative thinking requires us to work with interconnection and complexity. Seeing and working with complexity is therefore both relevant to the present and the future. 
    • Time – the amplifier of change – whether its through compound interest, network effects or technological acceleration, time has the power to amplify both the good and the bad. Regenerative thinking recognises that things are constantly in flow, evolving and adapting over time time. Applying a long-term view is therefore both relevant to today’s interests and tomorrow’s.
    • Iteration – the means of navigating complexity over time. whether it’s the philosophy of continuous improvement, or the method of iterative problem solving – cycles of action and reaction are part of how we work. Regenerative practice requires long-term cycles of experimentation, feedback and learning.  Therefore iterative working has both currency in the present and the future.

    Complexity, time, iteration – are warp threads that link today and tomorrow. They provide a common language that allows us to address immediate concerns through a frame that is still compatible with our regenerative goals.

    You will see these threads running throughout the patterns in this book. 

    But on their own, they are not enough to guarantee a regenerative future. We can also with with complexity, time and iteration to create other, less desirable futures. 

    What bends these threads is the crosswise threads we weave in between, the weft that bends the present towards the regenerative future. 

  • Seeing the pattern in the strands

    In 2022 I founded the Regenerative Design Lab with the intention of helping to figure out what regenerative design might mean for the construction industry, and how we might shift theory into practice. 

    Over the past four years this has been a shared journey, one shaped by more than 70 participants we have had in the Lab programme, by my Lab co-facilitator Ellie Osborne and the hundreds of conversations we have had along the way. 

    At the start, we realised that was lots we didn’t know. Regenerative design felt like a like a tangled web of many different strands, including themes as diverse as: philosophy, technology, systems thinking, Indigenous wisdom, ecosystems, social justice, biomimicry and community organising. 

    Our first aim was to simply hold space for these conversations and create a framework for reflective exploration and application of these strands of thinking.

    At a similar time, James and I started writing a book. Our job was to take this emerging theory of regenerative design and present it to an audience of structural engineers in a way that was both inspirational and also routed in the realities of projects.

    I have to be honest, that at times, across all these initiatives, the weave of these conversations had been very confusing and I regularly tied myself in knots.

    But over time, patterns had begun to emerge. Certain ways of structuring the conversation worked better for some participants in the Lab than others. Some approaches led to more reflection and introspection, others led to people taking action. And there are clear patterns emerging in what helps to bring different audiences on a journey.

    James and I rewrote the Regenerative Structural Engineer three times before we found a way of sequencing our arguments that seemed to work. That the book has now been sold in over 26 countries – a sign that this pattern resonated. 

    In the two years since then, I’ve had many more conversations, both inside the Lab and out, and learnt more about the different ways to hold a conversation about regenerative design.

    One of the questions I get most often is usually a variation of: how do I talk about this with my clients/can you just give me the slides?

    But it’s not as simple as that. You have to take people on a journey. The journey depends on who you are and who they are. But if you can find a formula that works, you can create a pattern that you can repeat, from conversation to conversation, from projects to project, so that over time we can gradually shift our industry.

    This book is my attempt to guide people in finding their own patterns for exploring and talking about regenerative design. It is an attempt to stitch together what we’ve learnt from all this work and create repeatable patterns that can spin out into practice. 

  • Forest Ark – a lesson in continuous place-based design

    The Forest Ark is our most distinctive building at Hazel Hill Wood. It was designed in 2008 to showcase high-tech, off-grid living. Within its curving, organic form, rainwater was converted into drinking water, a wood-burning stove cooks, heats water for washing and heating; there is a cob wall that transmits heat from the south-facing wall.

    The problem is, fifteen years later, many of these technologies are no longer working – or indeed never worked. It turns out that operating all these technologies together is complicated. Getting these systems to work in sync takes regular testing and tweaking of routines, which is fine if you live there every day, but is not suited to a building that is for more occasional educational use. 

    So is this a failure? The only failure I would say is if we fail to see this building as an experiment. The failure would be if we gave up and stopped learning. 

    The challenges of keeping the building working have caused the Forest Ark to fall into some disrepair with a potentially hefty bill for restoring it to its full glory. The easiest path would be to abandon the building. This is more typically the approach of modern construction. A blank slate is so much easier to work with, so much easier to profit from, than the complexities of existing structures.

    A regenerative approach is to see our work on the Forest Ark as an act of care, to unlock the potential of what we have, and to see the potential of the work itself to create thriving, not just in the ends of improving the building. 

    For that care to start, we need to get to know each other. Our first date is the rainwater harvesting system. We just don’t think we can justify the expense and complication of running a rainwater harvesting and high-tech purification system on such a small scale. But connecting to the mains is itself an experiment that involves digging around the site to rediscover the buried rainwater harvesting system and the wastewater pipes. 

    And in that digging work, I already notice my connection to and affection for this building growing. I appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the original construction and want to honour that in our maintenance. I also encounter, for the first time, the clay that is so abundant on our site. Could clay become a locally abundant material that we work with?

    Buildings are not static objects but living experiments that can evolve over time. Through the process of continuous, place-based design, we create and then we observe and see what needs to change. That ongoing dialogue connects us to place, connects us to the specific emergent needs of the local built environment and the local community. 

    My hope is that through our work with the Forest Ark, we weave more people into the journey, developing our skills as we go to work with local materials, building our capacity to adapt and evolve with the place around us.

    Hazel Hill Build Weeks

    If you are interested in getting involved with caring for our off-grid eco-buildings at Hazel Hill, then you might be interested joining one of our two Build Weeks in July from 14th to 27th July 2025. I’ll share on this blog details when they go live.

  • Observe | Brief | Ideas | Test | Repeat

    This week I’ve been making the case for a continuous, place-based approach to design. As James Norman and I set out in the Regenerative Structural Engineer, we see this process as a cycle of the following stages.

    1. Observation

    Traditional design often begins with a design brief—a predefined problem to be solved. But Continuous Place-Based Design, with its focus on working with the existing dynamics of a place rather than imposing change from outside, begins with observation.

    Observation means more than a desk study or mapping exercise. It requires time spent in a place—experiencing it from different perspectives, noticing rhythms, interactions, and patterns of change. But observation isn’t just the first step. It is something we return to again and again, each time we make a change.

    2. Brief

    From observation, we begin to sense what is needed. The brief emerges as a way of distilling these needs into a set of design requirements.

    In traditional design, the brief is often seen as something to resolve upfront—reducing uncertainty as quickly as possible. But the Designer’s Paradox reminds us that a brief is never fully known at the start; understanding of the brief unfolds through the act of designing itself.

    Continuous Place-Based Design embraces this reality. The brief evolves over time, but it doesn’t necessarily converge to a single, finalised solution. Each iteration is the best response for now, while recognising that every intervention changes the system—and with it, the design brief itself.

    3. Ideas

    The creative phase of the process is deeply influenced by the place itself. Ideas are not imposed from outside but emerge from the system we are designing within.

    The designer’s role is not just to generate ideas, but to facilitate the emergence of ideas from place—to see what is latent, what is already forming, what might be supported. At the same time, by embedding ourselves in a place, we too become part of its system. Our ideas are shaped by this connection, rather than being external impositions.

    4. Make and Test

    This is where we intervene—where design moves from thought to action. We begin making changes to the system.

    Interventions can range from small-scale tests to large-scale changes—though an important principle stands: start small, learn, then scale out. Through making, we begin to see how the system responds.

    For example, in a housing development, instead of building an entire estate at once, we might start with a few houses, observing how the place changes and adapts before expanding further. The goal is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to work with the unforeseen consequences of our design decisions—using them as feedback to refine and update the brief.

    Back to Observation Again

    Having made our changes to the system, we go back to observation. But we are not back where we started: the system we are designing in has changed and we too are changed by that process. We become a more integrated part of the system we are designing in, better able to facilitate change that will bring forward thriving in that place.

  • What is Continuous Place-Based Design?

    Continuous Place-Based Design is distinct from its opposite — Short-Term Design from Anywhere (see yesterday’s post). The following is an extract from a new entry I wrote today on the Constructivist website describing Continuous Place-Based Design. 

    Engineers and architects often design buildings, but their true impact is on places—the communities and ecosystems that inhabit them. If we want our work to create genuinely positive outcomes for both humans and the wider living world, we need to move beyond an isolated focus on buildings and shift towards a deeper understanding of place. So how can we evolve our design philosophy to support the creation of thriving places?

    Places are complex living systems, full of people and other species, shaped by relationships and constant change. In such systems, we cannot fully predict the impact of the changes we introduce. Instead, we learn by doing—by making small interventions, observing their effects, and adjusting accordingly. Long-term engagement with place is essential for truly understanding how it works.

    This gives us our first clue: design must be an ongoing process, not a one-off intervention.

    A second clue comes from recognising that every place is unique, and that uniqueness becomes even more pronounced the deeper we look. How can we possibly create designs that embrace such diversity? The living world offers a model: evolution. Nature doesn’t rely on rigid masterplans—it works iteratively, testing variations, adapting over time, and responding to changing conditions. The result is a best-fit design for the specific ecological, cultural, and environmental context.

    If we take these two starting points seriously, then instead of asking “What do we want to do to this place?”, we should begin by asking:

    • What is already here?
    • What is needed?
    • What is missing?
    • What is beginning to change?

    From this foundation, design can emerge gradually—guided by the dynamics of the place itself. Small interventions can be tested, refined, and expanded, always with an eye on how the system is responding. This shifts design from being a one-time act imposed from outside to an ongoing process that works with that place, learns from that place, and evolves alongside it.

    In our book, The Regenerative Structural Engineer, James and I call this design philosophy ‘Continuous Place-Based Design’.

    Tomorrow I’ll share an overview of the stages in this process.

  • Human beings or human doings

    It is easy to look back on the year and list what you have done – projects started and milestones met, things ticked off.

    It is much harder to look back and reflect on how you have been.  Asking questions like how you have felt along the way or how you have inhabited the year are much more groined and embodied questions than what you have done.

    But these latter questions remind us that we are human beings rather than human doings.

    This year, I’m going to try weaving this question into more of my end-of-year conversations and self-reflection. Not just what did I do?, but how was I?

  • Setting learning goals vs. seeing what happens

    This came up in a recent training course. I always ask people what they want to get out of a training programme. To set themselves some learning goals.

    But how do you know what you want to get out of a training course before you start? 

    An alternative, more emergent approach might be to attend the course, be open-minded, and see what you can take from it. By setting goals, aren’t you shutting down possibilities that you hadn’t foreseen?

    I think the best course is somewhere in the middle: to set out on the training with some intentions, but to be open to what comes up. This requires us to be iterative in our learning. We need to set goals, take some action, and then see what happens. 

    We may discover along the way that there is something else that we wanted to learn. Fine — then adjust your goals.

    But, as my mentor, Prof Søren Wilert once said to me, if you don’t know where you were trying to get to, you can’t assess the success of your actions.

  • Mindset leverage

    Are you excited about the possibilities of your next project? Or worried about the unknowns? Do you see the possibility for competition or collaboration?

    There is not a part of design that mindset does not affect. That is because design is an interaction between the outer world of reality and the inner world of perception, imagination and choice.

    For me, our mindset is how we see the world – how it shows up for us. Our mindset affects what we look for and what we see when we gather data. It affects the sort of ideas we have. It affects what we hold important when we evaluate options. 

    So if we want to change the outcomes of our work as designers, there is merit in considering mindsets. Both the mindsets we bring and the mindsets we create through the processes we set up. 

    We shape our individual mindsets through reflective practice. We shape our collective mindsets through changing the working culture. These are invisible tools with huge leverage.