"More and more designers and builders are realizing that...solutions to the real problems of development continue to elude us. Today's green projects conserve energy, reduce wastes, and improve the quality of life. Yet these improvements only slow the degradation of planetary ecosystems. ...Development, with its high impacts on the planet, needs to become a source of ecological health."
Revitalist Magazine article, 2006
"Regenerative Design is grounded in...the belief that, as a part of a larger order, we humans must act in harmony with those larger patterns. When we do so, our designs become instruments for enabling the whole of a place to move to a richer and healthier expression of life. And in turn, a healthier whole grows the viability and vitality of the part (be it a river restoration or a housing development). By seeing the ultimate aim of all our work as the regeneration and evolution of increasingly vital, viable and inspiriting places, we not only create extraordinary designs, we become more fully human."
Design Intelligence article, 2001
Principles For Sustainable Community
Community is an act of Will. It requires commitment to engage in a dynamic natural process that enables coalescence of diversity toward a common purpose. A sustainable community is life giving for generations. It includes place and people, engaged in value-adding, reciprocal relationships. It evolves in harmony with changing demands on its internal and external environments.
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The Next Step: Transforming the Building Industry to Model Nature
The site assessments commonly conducted within Permaculture often ends up yielding a laundry list of characteristics we learn about the effects of wind, water and other energies on a site, soils and underlying geological structures, plant and animal communities and their relative health, etc.. But this is like trying to understand a person by describing the color of eyes or hair, or the way they walk. When it comes to living systems, the whole is far more than the sum of the parts. If we actually want to know someone, and if we want to know a place, we must penetrate beneath the surface characteristics to discover the organizing core that generates those characteristics. Like people, places have soul.
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Introduction to The Thinking Behind Regenerative Design/Development
This bibliography lists some of our favorite books from the multiple disciplines that shape and have shaped our thinking.
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Trajectory of Environmental Design
Our culture is growing in understanding of how to address and embrace the complexities
of living systems. The design professions are rapidly moving to create guidelines of
practice that help us move beyond the boundaries of conventional scopes of work.
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Shifting our Mental Model: "Sustainability" to Regeneration
Sustainability, as currently practiced, is primarily an exercise in efficiency. In other
words, through the use of BREEAM, LEED, and other rating systems we are attempting to slow
down the damage caused by excessive resource use. We must do better. Instead of doing less
damage to the environment, it is necessary to learn how we can participate with the environment.
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