Author: Oliver Broadbent

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Stacked multiple ‘beanifits’

Beans.

Fix nitrogen in the soil when they grow, increasing soil health in the process.

Are a useful replacement for more carbon-intensive protein sources such as meat

Require a third of the water to grow than beef, kilo for kilo.

Are high in fibre.

Are cheap.

The first factor on its own is significant. What this says is that by growing beans we increase soil health. In other words we can meet our needs and in doing so be part of a cycle of enrichment. That on its own is regenerative.

But add on the other factors and we see stacked multiple benefits. These are changes are transformative. Like reducing private cars in city centres, increased urban tree planting, and reintroduction of beavers into certain environments. These are interventions that have the potential to unlock so many benefits, they become a cascade.

In a resource scarce economy, we need design solutions that don’t just make a small change but that unlock a wave of better.

Bean data from 

Guardian.co.uk/Wind of change as celebrity chefs join drive to get more beans into diet.

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Complete idiom

As the idiom goes: 

Jack of all trades, master of none.

But did you know this is only half of it. The full idiom is:

Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than a master of one.

Normally we only hear the first part, but the second half changes the sense completely. 

People who like doing lots of things… you can now feel better about yourselves. As for the specialists…

Thank you to the person two rows back on the train who shared this in my ear-shot.

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I’m so glad I came to your meeting

What would make someone say this?

How you greet them?

The thought you put into the structure?

Checking what they need to participate?

The care in deciding who attends?

The discipline and generosity in how you facilitate?

The biscuits?

Whatever it is, when your attendees are glad they are there, they can participate more happily. And when we are happy we can see more possibility. More potential. Willing to take a risk and propose something different.

But when gladness disappears, the creative shutters come down, and with them the possibility of a worthwhile session together.

So, what will make your participants say, yes that was great, I’m so glad I came to your meeting?

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Does power support change?

Earlier this week I wrote about designers needing to understand the conditions for change. What enables change and what blocks it?

If we understand organisational culture as how things get done in an organisation, then culture gives us some strong clues about what – or who might be enabling or blocking change.

Power is one of the six lenses of culture in the Johnson and Scholes culture web. How people with power wield it in the organisation sets a strong signal for what is valued and what can be ignored. The policy may say one thing, but it is what management or leadership actually do that sets the culture.

And so back to change. Do the people with power visibly support change? If so, a culture of change will enable you to do your work more easily. If not, you will have more work to do.

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Never mind the aurochs

…here’s the Tauros.

I read last week that Aurochs were the third heaviest mammals to wander Europe, after woolly mammoths and their sartorial companions, woolly rhinoceroses. Aurochs were like giant long-horned cows. They crashed their way through woodlands, opening up the canopy by knocking over trees. In doing so they allowed an interconnected mosaic of habitats to form and sustain in the woods of Europe. 

That is until over 300 years ago when they became extinct in the UK. It is believed the last aurochs was killed in Poland four centuries ago.

As engineers (and other humans) become increasingly concerned about habitat loss and restoration, there is increasing interest in the role that extinct mega fauna (giant animals) played in creating and maintaining thriving habitats. 

And so I am excited to hear about this experimental programme which aims to recreate the effects that aurochs had on the landscape. In this scheme, charity Trees for Life is releasing a herd of Tauros into the Dundreggan Estate, near Loch Ness. Tauros have been back-bred from long-horned cattle to create animals that begin to resemble the mega fauna that once roamed the UK.

I see this project as an exciting example of unlocking the living world’s potential to create rich habitats. And of the role humans can play in this process of trying to counter some of the previous harm we have done.

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What’s holding the current situation in place?

Design is about making change. Our aim is to turn an existing situation into a better situation. Sometimes that might be about designing a new thing. But other times it may be about allowing change to happen. 

If we are interested in the latter then a useful question to ask is what is holding the existing situation in place? What is reinforcing the status quo? What is stopping innovation? What is preventing change?

Sometimes we need both. We need to float a new idea, but to stop it from sinking, we need to also create the conditions for change. But other times, it may be sufficient just to design the conditions for change, and then to allow something that has been waiting to emerge the chance to develop.

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Where we make but also where we take

This has become one of my catchphrases in regenerative design*. To think of design as being for ‘where we make but also where we take’. The role of the regenerative designer is to create a transition to an industry in which our designs create human and ecological thriving.

To make that possible we need to bring two separate things into our view at the same time. The place where we are doing the making, and the places that are we are drawing upon to do that making.

Because if our work makes the world better where we are making, but worse where we are taking, we are not creating thriving. We are just shifting it from one place to the other.

*It definitely is a catchphrase – I’ve already written a post this year with this exact same title.

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Just build less

More and more people are asking: how do we move from sustainable design to regenerative design?

In these conversations, we often talk about system change. We talk about strengthening the connection between designers and the origins of their materials. We discuss unlocking symbiotic loops in material supply and enabling designs that best serve the local ecosystem. All of these changes are essential—and they’ll take years, even decades, to fully implement.

But these conversations can be a distraction from a much more pressing, if uncomfortable thing we can do to shift our industry towards more regenerative ways of working. Given the massive contribution that construction makes to greenhouse emissions and the massive impact it has an habitat destruction, it is simply this. 

We must build much less stuff. 

Build less is writ large in the IStructE’s Hierarchy for Net-Zero Design. And while this hierarchy focuses on carbon, given the impact that material extraction has on habitat loss, there is a strong case that building less will significantly reduce our impact on ecosystems too.

Of course, there will be things we need, structures we can’t do without. But once we set the intention to build less, we can redirect our creativity as designers toward adapting and thriving with what we already have.

We’ll still need to build some—but we can, and must, build much less.

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Seeing the latent potential

As Rob Hopkins points out in his wonderful book From What Is to What If, the climate crisis is, at its core, a crisis of the imagination. If we can’t envision a thriving world, we won’t be able to create it.

A key skill in regenerative design is cultivating the conditions that allow us to imagine this thriving future.

This requires us to not only see what exists but also to imagine what could be. For example, looking at an empty park and envisioning it full of people running , or standing on a traffic-filled street and picturing it so quiet that birdsong fills the air and people stop to chat.

In these cases, the elements are already present—they are latent. But to unlock this latent potential, we must recognise both the desertified present and the abundant possibilities. Only then can we begin to design the next step toward that vision.

Equipping ourselves for this imaginative work is, I believe, a critical part of becoming a regenerative designer.

Hopkins, R., 2019. From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT.