On 30th January 2025, Oliver delivered the keynote for Hawkins Brown’s Regenerative Design Research Week, bringing together ideas on how regenerative design can reshape architectural practice.
As the final session in a week-long series of talks and workshops, this keynote helped tie together discussions on regenerative approaches in architecture. The session explored how organisations can map their activities against larger systems of change and provided practical frameworks for embedding regenerative principles into design practice.
On 29th January 2025, we ran our ‘How to Have Ideas’ workshop with DYSE Structural Engineers in Manchester, exploring the creative process in design and how engineers can generate and test ideas effectively.
Building a Creative Toolkit
The session focused on:
Understanding a design brief as a flexible starting point for creativity.
Using our Kalideascope model to explore where ideas come from.
Testing and refining ideas through models and structured evaluation.
Today, Oliver was in Cambridge delivering his workshop “Things to Think and Feel about a Brief,” as part of his teaching on the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) Masters programme.
With the launch of our fourth Regenerative Design Lab cohort next week, we’ve updated our regenerative design reading list.
Interestingly many of the books don’t even mention the phrase regenerative design, but what they share in common is an alignment with the a holistic world view, within which regenerative design sits.
Applications are now open to join Cohort 4 of the Regenerative Design Lab. For this cohort we are partnering with Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator to ask how can we create policy that delivers regenerative design. We are looking to build a mixed cohort of policy writers, designers and people interested in influencing policy. All the details on the cohort 4 page.
This morning we said a big hello and welcome to our second cohort of participants in Regenerative Design Lab. Today, this group of 19 engineers and built-environment professionals begin a deep dive into the principles of regenerative design. Our aim is to experiment with regenerative principles and translate theory into practice for wider adoption by the construction industry.
These last two weeks the Constructivist team have been working to finalise details of the next Regenerative Design Lab programme. Applications for Cohort 2 will open in January. See our updated Regenerative Design Lab page and register your interest to stay updated on the application process.
How should we think about a design brief? As a source of certainty; a point of reference? Or as a starting point for a journey of co-exploration with the client? These are the questions that Oliver is getting into today in his lectures today on the IDBE Masters programme at Cambridge University.
What if each construction project left the eco-system richer than before? What if humans could design with nature rather than in spite of it? What if engineering and construction could restore our human and natural systems?
The answer is in regenerative design. But how do we turn its principles into practice? Through experimentation, reflection and communication.
The Constructivist Regenerative Design Lab is a six-month accelerator programme for leading engineering and construction industry professionals to support each other to apply regenerative principles in practice.
Our mission is to find out what works and communicate it to our organisations and the rest of industry.
You – a leading engineering or construction industry professional – and 10-15 others who see regenerative design as the future and want to make it reality. You will be the peers who support and constructively challenge each other on the journey.
Real problems – be they design-based, organisational or strategic – regenerative design principles need to solve the real problems we face. These become the raw materials for the lab.
Ecosystems – regenerative design solutions are specific to the ecosystems in which we are working. That eco-system and your connection with it becomes an intrinsic part of the journey.
Outputs
Individuals will be supported on a personal development journey, increasing their awareness and skill in regenerative design practice. They will leave with a toolkit of approaches and hopefully a transformed relationship with the ecosystem they are part of.
Organisations will benefit from a key member of their team introducing innovative regenerative design practice into their projects. The Lab also aims to provide organisations with an opportunity to fulfil their regenerative design practice commitments.
Industry will benefit from the shared results of these experiments in regenerative design practice. Together, the outputs from the lab will feed into the creation of the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design in the Built Environment. These are the patterns for thinking about regenerative design that can enable influential designers and construction-industry professionals to shift the system’s rules and interrelationships towards more regenerative outcomes.
Method
Over six online workshops and three one-night residential stays, participants will:
unpack the principles of regenerative design.
experiment through application of principles in the workplace
explore application of regenerative practice in their own lives
reflect on the impact of this action on their design work
The lab is based on a peer-supported, action-learning approach. We form the lab by helping each other to identify what we want to understand about regenerative design. We each identify a workplace challenge with which we can experiment and support each other in applying principles of regenerative design in practice. Through cycles of action and reflection, we experiment and learn from each other.
Between sessions, groups within the lab meet on an informal basis to check-in on each other’s progress, and you have access to coaching from the facilitators.
I took up engineering in order to practise philosophy
I took up engineering in order to practise philosophy Ove Arup
Reconnect with natural systems
Our forest lab is located at Hazel Hill Wood, where we will be running three seasonal residential sessions to explore our relationship with natural ecosystems. Hazel Hill is an off-grid education centre situated in 70 acres forest where for 30 years people have come to connect with nature. It combines indoor workshop space and accommodation with access to a thriving forest with a range of ecosystems to explore.
We will take an experimental approach and observe, experiment, measure and learn from these complex natural systems.
Participants will engage in a transformative process to shift perspectives away from believing we are separate from the natural world.
‘When we can think as part of a system, we can better self-regulate to thrive within the limits of that system’.
Looby Macnamara
Application, facilitators, programme and pricing
Application process
Applications are now closed for the Regenerative Design Lab that starts in April 2022. If you are interested in joining the next lab, due to start in early 2023, please drop us a message and we will keep you posted.
The 15 places on the lab are open to leaders and future leaders in engineering and construction. You should be passionate about shifting engineering and construction away from a paradigm of growth and destruction and towards a paradigm of repair and renewal. We welcome applications from industry, academia and supporting organisations. You need to have some body of experience to draw upon and the opportunity to explore and apply regenerative principles in practice.
To assemble a balanced group of participants in the lab, we are asking people interested in joining to go through a simple application process. The closing dates for applications is the 4th March 2022. We will invite the short-listed candidates for a phone interview by mid-March and places will be confirmed by end-March.
Meet the facilitators
Oliver Broadbent
Course Director – Oliver is founder of Constructivist, writer, international speaker on creativity in engineering and an award-winning design teacher.
Ellie Osborne
Co-facilitator – Ellie is a researcher, designer, coach and collaborator who works at the intersection of innovation, systems thinking, future trends and personal growth.
Programme dates
April 5th (10am – 12pm) – kick-off online meet
April 28th (9am – 12pm) – skills development online workshop
May 11th (11am) – 12th (3pm) – Spring Residential at Hazel Hill Wood
June 8th – (9am – 12pm) – skills development online workshop
July 5th (11am) – 6th (3pm) – Summer Residential at Hazel Hill Wood
August – summer break
September 14th (9am – 12pm) – skills development online workshop
October 4th (9am – 12pm) – skills development online workshop
November 1st (11am) – 2nd (3pm) – Autumn Residential at Hazel Hill Wood
We have varied the days of the week on which programme activities are scheduled in order that the schedule does not consistently clash with part-time workers’ days off.
As well as committing to attending the sessions, participants are expected to spend time during their working week to find ways to apply regenerative principles in practice and to reflect on the impact of their actions.
Pricing
We are offering places on the course at two different prices to enable participants from different kinds of organisations to pay what they can afford.
£1,200 – Corporate rate. Intended for small, medium and large organisations who have a commercial interest in developing and contributing to regenerative design practice.
£700 – Self-funding/micro/NGO – Intended for individuals, people from micro organisations and NGOs who may be able to afford less but have just as valuable a contribution to make.
We commit to making at least five places available at the self-funding/micro/NGO rate.
“Oliver Broadbent is a brilliant and provocative trainer. This is time and money well spent, especially for those in senior management of professional services firms.”
