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Tag: RegenerativeDesignLab

  • 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. 

  • A regenerative framing for supporting local workforce development

    One of the participants in the Regenerative Design Lab is exploring working with The Purpose Xchange,  who work directly with individuals to uncover their dreams and aspirations. The organisation then helps to match those aspirations with work opportunities in the local borough. 

    A key question the lab participant is exploring is how providing an operating space for this community activity could help enable and scale this initiative, proven elsewhere, to thrive in their local borough.

    We can  intuitively see the benefits of this approach, but how does this work for more explicitly into a regenerative framing? 

    The Living Systems Blueprint

    In regenerative design, we use the living world itself as a template for understanding how to thrive within ecosystem limits. Instead of extractive, linear systems, we seek to imitate the mechanisms that the living world uses to thrive within its ecosystem limits. 

    The Living Systems Blueprint, which James Norman and I first proposed in the Regenerative Structural Engineer, outlines three key characteristics of thriving, living systems. 

    • Increased interconnection – strengthen the number and quality of connections between elements in the local system
    • Increased symbiosis – creating mutually beneficial exchange that build local system richness
    • Increased capacity to adapt – ensuring the local system can adapt in response to changing environmental conditions. 

    Creating more local symbiosis in the workforce

    Of the three elements of the Living Systems Blueprint, this example relates most closely to creating symbiosis, but it also relates to building interconnection and unlocking capacity to adapt. 

    Living systems create thriving with the resources that are present in the local ecosystem. By resources we mean materials, energy and labour. These resources go round and round, the waste streams from one process being the input to the next. The work of the system creates structures of growing complexity that give the local system increasing richness. 

    This approach is distinct from the alternative: importing materials, energy and labour from other places, and treating processes as linear, creating unlimited consumption and drawdown of resources.

    Building on this principle, the regenerative economy:

    • Works with and seeks to build the latent potential of the local workforce. 
    • Creates local thriving by working with the unique potential and needs of that  place. 
    • Avoids one-size-fits-all solutions that waste resource and a poor fit for the local system’s needs.

    A workforce that is rooted in the local economy and connected to local opportunities:

    • Returns money to the local community – but also builds relationships of trust (symbiosis)
    • Strengthens people’s connection to their local place and each other (interconnection)
    • Builds the local capability to maintain, repair and modify our build environment (capacity to adapt)

    The role of the regenerative designer

    One of the key roles of the regenerative designer is to connect together and enable the growth of positive initiatives that create thriving. Regenerative design isn’t necessarily about imposing solutions – rather it about seeking out and amplifying what is emergent in the system.

    In this case, creating operating space for Purpose Xchange to work from could be a key step in unlocking this change. Sometimes, the barriers to initiatives that build local thriving are not about potential or demand, but lie in being able to join up the pieces. This could be one of the most important roles for the regenerative designer.

  • Slow-growing ideas

    Some ideas are an instant hit. Some don’t stick at all. And some—ones you thought hadn’t stuck—are simply taking a long time to grow.

    Today, I’m running training for a group of engineers who are passionate about moving beyond warm words around the climate emergency. The material I’m drawing on comes from a course Constructivist ran back in 2020, titled Training on What to Do After Declaring a Climate Emergency.

    Back then, the IPCC’s 2018 report on climate breakdown and ecological collapse had captured the zeitgeist. Across all levels of the profession, engineers (and other humans) were beginning to confront the net impact of their work and the urgent need to act.

    Hundreds of firms signed up to various Built Environment Declares statements. These were terrific initiatives, requiring board-level sign-off and firm commitments from signatories.

    The big question, of course, was: What happens next?

    At Constructivist, we recognised that following those declarations, someone—usually at associate or associate director level—would be tasked with spearheading the initiative within their organisation.

    Our mission has always been to design and deliver training for engineers (and other humans) who are bravely reshaping the construction industry in the face of the climate and ecological emergency—working towards a future where our industry creates thriving in its wake.

    And so we developed and delivered Training on What to Do After Declaring a Climate Emergency. We ran it twice. Then Covid hit, and everything went quiet.

    In many ways, that course planted the seed for what became our next and most successful initiative: the Regenerative Design Lab. For that, I am immensely grateful.

    But I’ll admit, I’ve also felt disheartened. It seemed like the original framing—seizing that moment of change-making energy—hadn’t stuck.

    Then, recently, I started hearing from graduates of that original programme. They told me about the lasting impact it had on their work, how it gave them confidence to take bolder action in their designs, and how it inspired them to push further.

    And today, I’m running a workshop with a client that draws directly on the ideas from that same programme.

    Like the seeds of different tree species, some ideas grow quickly, while others take much longer to take root. The challenge is, unlike with trees, it’s much harder to know from the outset which ideas will spread quickly and which will turn out to be slow-growing.

    What’s important is that don’t judge the ideas that we have planted too quickly.

  • Some things you might not know about the Regenerative Design Lab

    In the coming weeks I’m going to be talking quite a lot about the Regenerative Design Lab because we have a new cohort starting next week. Some of you will know all about the Lab, some will know nothing, so, this quite long post is to help fill in the gaps.

    Beginnings

    Back in 2022, I was the recipient of the Sir Misha Black bursary and had the opportunity to develop my design teaching in new areas. I wanted to explore regenerative design. From what I already knew I realised that this exploration would be better done as a group, and so we set up the first Lab for that purpose. 

    Working with Alexie Sommer, we put together the original advert, and 20 brave people gave us their trust and signed up. About that time I also met Ellie Osborne, a brilliant facilitator, and the two of us have been co-facilitating the Lab ever since.

    The first cohort ran from March to October 2022. Our first cohort of participants from across the built-environment spectrum started digging into regenerative design. Our aim, to explore its principles and translate these into practice for industry. 

    Right from the start we have delivered the Lab with the support of Engineers Without Borders UK. Being regenerative is one of their four key principles for globally responsible engineering. We will be collaborating with Engineers Without Borders UK to share the findings of the Lab in the educational policy space.

    Growing

    Since then, with funding through my 1851 Fellowship in Regenerative Design, two more cohorts have completed the Lab process. We have over fifty Lab alumni who between them are spreading the ideas of regenerative practice across industry. The conversations from these cohorts heavily informed the book James Norman and I co-authored, The Regenerative Structural Engineer. 

    For each cohort there’s a report (accessible here).

    Regenerative design challenges the way we approach design. It’s not just a new flavour of design, but questions the goals, the motivations and how we show up. And so during the Lab, we consider regenerative design from a wide range of angles – including mindsets, systems thinking and how we collaborate.

    A key part of the Lab is spending time in a thriving, living system, which is why we take our participants on three residential visits to Hazel Hill Wood. We see the wood as one of the facilitators, providing an example to us of thriving, a place for congregation and focal point for considering the wonder of this living world that we want to protect.

    Evolving

    Our fourth cohort begins next week, and for the first time we are delivering this Lab in partnership with another host organisation, the Sustainability Accelerator at Chatham House. The focus for this cohort will be on how to create policy that delivers regenerative design. For the first time, this Lab cohort will have two homes, with one foot in the woods and the other in the centre of a city. 

    We are already beginning planning for our fifth cohort, for which we will be partnering with Watershed in Bristol. This cohort will focus on exploring regenerative design with a project context with particular emphasis on inclusion, diversity and power. Cohort 5 will kick off in September 2025.