Eiffel Over

Tag: Symbiosis

  • Cooking with what’s in the cupboard

    My thanks to Jen Ford of Factory X for this analogy. Regular design is like thinking to yourself, “what do I want for dinner?” then going to buy the ingredients from the supermarket. Circular design is more like seeing what’s in the cupboard and thinking creatively about what you can make.

    This shift in approach represents a different relationship with our cooking supply chain. The goals might still be the same: to eat something; to care for someone through providing them with food; maybe to eat healthily; possibly to spend time with family or friends around a meal. But the starting point is different: not what do I want but what do I have to work with.

    I was writing earlier this week about how an improv clown in a theatre works with the audience. They have to work with what is there – they can’t decide in advance how they want the world to be. But they can work with the audience dynamics to create something entertaining with the emotions the clown is able to generate.

    More generally, when we work with what is already present in the system, we have the potential to create a much lower energy solution. If we are working with a material that the system already produces: eg an existing waste stream or renewable resource, then we can create much tighter feedback loops that balance our choices against what’s available.

    But perhaps most excitingly, for the cook, for the clown and the engineer, working with what’s in the cupboard is a much more engaging creative challenge. Walking around the world, we start to see ingredients we can use – the world starts to reveal itself in new ways.

    So, what will you cook for dinner this evening?

  • 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.

  • Make hay while the wind blows

    Make hay while the wind blows. Riffing on yesterday’s theme of power, a few weeks ago as storm winds tore across the UK, I was kept awake by the sound of the plastic sheeting slapping against the scaffolding on the front of our house. 

    And I found myself wondering, what is the wind analogy to making hay while the sun shines? It’s an incantation to seize the moment and make the most of an opportunity while it lasts. And of course, we already harness wind power. I presume a lot more energy is generated on a stormy night.

    But like any abundance in nature, the wind doesn’t distribute its power evenly. It comes in surges. It’s a fleeting opportunity. 

    Storm’s blowing, quick—boil a kettle! Pump some water uphill! These were my middle-of-the-night musings.

    Eventually, my thoughts drifted to a memory from 2024: cycling along Loch Awe, near Oban. After a long day cycling in heavy winds, we reached a campsite in Dalavich that was attached to a well-equipped community centre. It had a restaurant and bar with a deck overlooking the lake, games rooms with pool and table tennis and excellent washing and cooking facilities.

    But it wasn’t just for tourists—the local community was in there too, enjoying the space. Curious, I wanted to know more about how this facility had been paid for, and it turns out that it gets funds from the community owned wind turbine at the top of the hill. 

    Brilliant, I thought: community energy, harvesting a local abundant resource—the wind—and reinvesting the money into the community.

    I suppose on gale-force nights, the drinks are on the house?

  • 340-degree vision

    I read on a fact sheet that guinea pigs have 340-degree vision. On a horizontal plane they can see almost all around. Imagine! Their only blind spots are directly behind and a small patch directly in front of them. 

    That’s because they are prey animals. They spend their whole waking time observing their environment for threats (they can even sleep with their eyes open). And while they can’t see far, they build up a detailed mental map of their surroundings by scuttling around, which means they can navigate even in the dark.

    The animals that hunt them, on the other hand, have forward-facing eyes. Their breadth of vision is limited but their acuity is much higher. This focus allows them to spot and lock on to their prey from much further away.

    I note that my eyes are on the front of my head. Does that make me a hunter? 

    And when we design, which way are our eyes pointing? Are we focused on a pre-defined target or are we continually scanning the landscape to build up a picture?

    For the regenerative designer, seeing is much more akin to the latter: building up a picture of the system we are in by continually exploring it. Building our interconnection with place. Searching for symbiosis we can unlock. Looking for emergent patterns we can enable. Then we can know how to act, even without being able to see straight forward.