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Pattern Book Notes: Kalideascope + System Survey

My intention with the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design is that users can share with each other how they have used the tools and techniques within. So, kicking off this process, this is how I used two motifs two weeks ago to run a lunch for team at Elliott Wood to support an internal regenerative design competition they are running. 

Building a Kalideascope

If a group of people are working with a written design brief, then my starting point for creative thinking is to get them to build a Kalideascope. The groups write three headings on a large piece of paper: information, questions and ideas. I then get them to read the brief out very slowly and everytime something that comes to mind under any of these headings, they must shout stop, and write it down, before the reader can start again. 

The exercise is a quick method to generate lots of thinking. 

To add a regenerative lens to it, I prefaced the exercise by reading out the motif on Beavers. This motif primes listeners to think about the potential stacked multiple benefits of our interventions. 

Systems Survey

To tune the group deeper into regenerative thinking, I then read out the questions in the Systems Survey. These are questions that combine the theory of the Living Systems Blueprint with a civil engineering site survey perspective. 


The questions are:

  1. What is connected and what is separated?
  2. What is thriving and what is in decline?
  3. What is in flow and what is static?
  4. What is changing and is fixed?
  5. What stories does this place tell?
  6. What is the placing trying to do — and what helps or hinders it?

I read each question out and gave groups 3-4mins to populate their Kalideascopes with any new information, questions and ideas. 

Overall, it felt like a high-energy session and I think people went away with new ideas on how to bring regenerative thinking into their design process.

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Punching through the canopy

Yesterday I wrote about creating a forest garden from scratch — turning a pasture into thriving food growing space. But what if there is already forest? How do you approach the problem from the other angle? This is one of the questions that came up at the Forest Garden talk I’ve been writing about this week. 

When a forest has grown a thick canopy, little light can get in. So while it may seem counterintutive, the key is to create holes in the canopy to let the light in. Either by cutting back branches or taking down whole trees. It is at the margins between the light and the dark areas that the most interesting growth happens. And so forest gardens need lots of these edges in order to be effective. 

Punching through the canopy to let the light in. It’s a powerful metaphor for breaking through an existing system to let a new one take off. The canopy is a metaphor for anything that stifles. The asphalt of an industrial estate covering acres of soil. Streets clogged with cars that stop chance encounters. Places through which no fresh air ciruclates. The doom of scarcity and control that stifle play and innovation. Organisational hierarchies that lock out change. 

But punch through that layer and a pocket of life can establish itself. A niche of new. And then we can join those niches up to create a network of change.

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Creating thriving from scratch

Yesterday I wrote about the seven levels of a forest garden. I learnt about these at a talk given in the forest garden at Coed Hills Rural Arts Centre. The forest garden there is a flourishing, food producing space, but it hadn’t always been so. We heard how in 2009 the garden had been a field. And so how did the field become the thriving place we see today?

I’m interested in this question because it tells of taking active measures to create flourishing places. Left to its own devices the space would have brambled over, trees would have taken root and eventually the field would have become wood. But through active intervention, the team have created a space that is more flourishing than dense woodland would be — productive and in balance with its ecosystem. 

Key early moves include designing the space for the way the light falls. Forest gardens have lots of openings to let in the light, and so this structure needs to be thought about from the start. 

Another key factor was slowing down water that would run across the site in a storm and directing it through a series of swales. This was another dramatic intervention but one that has protected the soil from erosion and created ponds and multiple habitats. 

And finally, the team spoke about the work of holding things in balance until a natural balance could be achieved. For example, until the high trees grow tall, there can be too much light and the ground level plants grow out of control. Again this speaks to an active intervention needed in the transtion from a monoculture to a thriving polyculture. 

Most of the time, when humans build stuff, we have a negative overall impact on the world. Some say the best thing we can do is to stand back and let nature do its thing. But models such as forest gardening show how we can actively work with ecosystems to meet our needs while creating greater flourishing. We need to find the analogous models in construction, for example, for sourcing our construction materials. And we need to recognise that creating these supply chains will take many years of work before they can exist in harmony. 

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The Seven Levels of a Forest Garden

The following I learnt from Steve Watts, permaculture expert, during a talk he gave about Forest Gardens at the wonderful Coedfest, which he co-leads.


In a forest garden, plants and trees are layered over one another to create a growing system that is far more productive and diverse than farming a single crop on an area of land.

By stacking layers of complementary plants and trees over one another, you increase the amount of carbon that is being locked in, you increase the leaf litter that falls and so you increase the richness of the soil.

As Steve describes we can think of a forest garden has having seven layers:

  • High trees,
  • Lower trees,
  • Tall shrubs,
  • Small shrubs,
  • Ground cover,
  • Plants in which we harvest the roots, and

  • Climbers.

Each of these layers can produce food at different times of the year, and each of these layers provides a complementary role to the others. It is a beautiful model for a stacked system that is creating life. And it is a reminder that when we bring different systems together in complementary ways we can create much greater richness and diversity than we keep things separate.

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Thriving

The Pattern Book uses ‘thriving’ as a shorthand for the goal of regenerative design. The full goal is more precise: for humans and the living world to survive, thrive and co-evolve. Each word has earned its place in this definition: humans, living world, survive, thrive, co-evolve. And when we are doing systems analysis, it is helpful to be precise. The Living Systems Blueprint helps us unpack this definition further into more measurable characteristics in a system.

But in everyday conversation, thriving is enough. It’s a feeling. It stirs a reaction. It’s a familiar word.

Sustainability seeks to meet our needs without compromising the needs of the future. It is a zero-sum game — you end up with no more or less at the end. But aiming for thriving says we want more life. Not just life as a noun but a phenomenon.

As Janine Benyus says, ‘life contains the conditions
for more life’
.
Life that gets more sophisticated over time.
Life that grows in richness.
Life that exists in balance.
Thriving conveys the feeling of life doing this.

So, when we need to get technical, we can talk about the goal of regenerative design and the Living Systems Blueprint.

But when we want a compelling destination,
we’ll just say: thriving.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.

References

Tippett, K. (n.d.). Janine Benyus Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings [Audio recording]. https://onbeing.org/programs/janine-benyus-biomimicry-an-operating-manual-for-earthlings/

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Systems Survey

This motif combines the Living Systems Blueprint with a civil engineering perspective to create six questions for a site investigation that can reveal the underlying system characteristics.

  1. What is connected and what is separated?
  2. What is thriving and what is in decline?
  3. What is in flow and what is static?
  4. What is changing and what is fixed?
  5. What stories does this place tell?
  6. What is the place trying to do – and what helps or hinders it?

User guide

  • Site survey — use these questions to bring a more systemic lens to a traditional site survey.
  • System investigation — use these questions to think more about infrastructure and policies and how they relate to the patterns they create on the ground.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. 

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Carrier Wave

In radio communications, a carrier wave is a signal that carries another signal. The carrier wave is the disturbance in the electromagnetic spectrum that travels out across the medium. Information to be transmitted is encoded by modifying the base wave’s amplitude (as in AM, amplitude modulation) or its frequency (as in FM, frequency modulation).

The carrier wave metaphor is a useful motif for thinking about what it is that transmits feedback around a system.

Through my phone I am connected to hundreds of contacts — but that doesn’t mean I am in communication with them. In contrast, with the much smaller group of people I work on projects with, there is regular transmission of information. In this smaller group, regular dialogue creates a carrier wave for feedback — how is everyone feeling? Are things going well? Where are the potential problems? Some of these signals are not explicit, but more subtle shifts in conversation — changes in tone, mood or bigger gaps in the signal.

Our reliance on others tunes us into the feedback available through our relationships. I can easily search online for live data feeds concerning the quality of water in rivers around the country, but I’m far more likely to pay attention to the river I swim in.

When thinking about levels of interconnectivity in systems, consider the reciprocity that exists in those relationships. It is not enough to build connections. Through the internet, engineers have never been more connected to communities and ecosystems — but what matters is having something that flows through the connection. A carrier wave for the feedback.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. 

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Living World

The Pattern Book uses the phrase ‘living world’ instead of nature. Nature tends to convey something outside — rural, picturesque and separate from us.

Living World describes something more encompassing. It’s everywhere. It’s in our towns and cities. It’s even inside us. And it doesn’t have to be pretty.

Nature will do, especially when speaking to the sceptical. But moving quickly to living world signals the deeper philosophy of the Pattern Book: life isn’t outside the window — it’s the container we live in.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.

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Short-Term Design from Anywhere

What might a design process might look like if its goal were the opposite of enabling humans and the living world to survive, thrive and co-evolve? The Pattern Book calls such an approach ‘Short-term Design from Anywhere’.

It might look like parachuting into a place we know nothing about and immediately starting to develop ideas. It might mean designing without ever visiting the site — relying instead on drawings, Google Earth and reports. It could mean defining success in ways that have nothing to do with the community or ecosystem of that place. It might not even consider the ecosystem at all.

Short-Term Design from Anywhere is about importing ideas from elsewhere — assuming that what worked well in one place will work just as well in another. It prefers one-size-fits-all solutions that seem economically efficient but fail to account for the cost of misalignment at a local level. This approach to design typically involves no local participation, no engagement, and no involvement — not in the design, not in construction, nor in long-term operation. It requires no commitment to place, no exposure to long term risks. It’s perfect for prioritising early return on investment for external stakeholders with no stake in the place itself.

Most of all, Short-Term Design from Anywhere assumes everything will work perfectly the first time. It does not anticipate learning, adaptation, or unintended consequences. And it rarely includes designers who stick around to find out what actually happens.

Overall, Short-Term Design from Anywhere doesn’t sound like a great approach. Fortunately, there’s another way—one that works with place rather than against it: Continuous Place-Based Design.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. 

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Beavers

Whenever we ask the question, “What if every time we built something, the world got better?” — my mind jumps to beavers.

Beavers often catch the imagination of people interested in regenerative design because they show how one species, while meeting its own needs, can have a disproportionately positive impact on their environment.

In the UK, beavers were hunted to extinction, but where they are reintroduced they are creating stacked, multiple benefits in their ecosystems. To protect their homes — or lodges — beavers dam rivers to raise the water level, creating a defensive moat. To build these dams, beavers fell trees, remove their branches, drag them into the riverbed and hold them down with mud and stones. Incredibly, where the trees are too far away for them to be moved, beavers have been seen to dig a canal which they then use to float their materials to site.

Where beavers build their dams, aquatic and invertebrate life goes up. The flow of water is slowed and downstream flooding is reduced. The land around beaver dams stays wetter, which increases the amount of carbon dioxide it can sequester. In droughts you can see from the air where beavers are active — these are the places that stay greener for longer.

Beavers are examples of what ecologists call a keystone species — leading to a massively positive impact on their ecosystems.

It is ironic that where once we hunted them to extinction, we are now inviting them back to manage our flood defences and increase the resilience of our living systems. I wonder who they’ll invoice?

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.