Category: For engineers (and other humans)

The word emergence has an almost quixotic feel for engineers. We are usually employed to maintain control over situations. But if we go back to the old definition of civil engineering—harnessing the forces of nature for the benefit of humankind—the word harnessing captures something important. It speaks of working with the system, not imposing control over it.

It’s the second half of that definition—for the benefit of humankind—that tends to cause us trouble. More recently, definitions have expanded to include protecting the environment for future generations. But it’s the first bit I want to focus on.

The systems we inhabit are complex: communities, ecosystems, supply chains. Their behaviour is not entirely predictable. They resist change, then suddenly shift into new patterns.

When we design with a control mindset, we seek to predict, manage and mitigate system behaviour. And when things don’t go to plan, we throw more time, money, energy and materials at the problem.

But we also know how to work with complexity. We start by observing. We notice trends and look for emergent behaviours. We run small experiments to see how the system responds. We update our understanding. We adapt our plans.

This is the art of emergent thinking. And it is enabled by an emergent mindset: one that tunes into what the system is trying to do, rather than forcing it to behave differently.

Ecosystems have an extraordinary capacity to self-organise around the best-fit solution for a given context. Regenerative designers aim to work with—and as part of—this self-organising capacity.

Several of the motifs in the Pattern Book support this mindset of emergence, for example:

• Continuous Place-Based Design—working in long-term relationship with place
• Framing the Question—finding different ways to look at the problems we encounter
• Changing Mindsets—recognising how shifts in the way we think changes the actions we take

And emergence is also written into the strategy of the book itself. This is a book designed to evolve—through new entries contributed by readers, through patterns that emerge from practice, and through adaptations that prove useful in the real world.

Growing an abundance of tools to support emergent design for our mutual interdependence and thriving—that’s the work the Pattern Book aims to do.

Abundance is one of the three regenerative mindsets we explore in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. It’s the capacity to see the potential for plenty in the world. It asks: what is possible here? What do we already have? What is missing that could return? What could there be?

In the construction industry, I don’t believe we need breakthrough technologies to create a thriving future. Not that new technologies won’t help—but the real breakthrough will come from an evolution in our thinking. A transformation in how we design: working with the existing affordances and latent capacity of places to meet both human and ecological needs.

An abundance mindset sees capacity everywhere—in skills, in communities, in shared expertise, in materials, in landscapes, in ecosystems. The places we design in are the seed trays where this abundance can grow.

Several motifs in the Pattern Book are dedicated to practising this mindset—to noticing what is already present, what could grow, and what might be shared:

• Seeing the Potential encourages us to spot underused resources and overlooked opportunities.
• Psychorederive helps see a place we know well through new eyes.
• System Survey asks: what could this place do? What latent capacity could be unlocked to meet our needs while enriching the wider system?

In the spirit of abundance, the tools in the Pattern Book are shared under a Creative Commons licence. We want readers to pick them up, use them, remix them, and create new ones. And we hope those new tools are shared in turn—so the whole field grows richer, and more possibilities can emerge over time.cause we want readers to pick up and use these tools, integrate them into their professional practice, remix them and create new tools, and share these new tools. The hope is that this content grows, becomes richer and over time lets new possibilities emerge.

The Pattern Book for Regenerative Design is built around three mindset shifts: interdependence, abundance, and emergence. These are foundational to regenerative design and my aim in writing this book has been to embed these mindsets not only in the content, but in the structure of the book—and in how it gets used.

Focusing today on interdependence:

Regenerative design is rooted in connection—connection to community, to ecology, to the places where we make, as well where we take.

An interdependence mindset recognises that we are part of all these systems—and we rely on them thriving. We are not independent from the world we design, from the harm we might cause or from the thriving we might create.

This is a book for engineers (and other humans) who want to work with this mindset and strengthen those connections. The 12 patterns in the Pattern Book help readers connect with different contexts:

• Patterns for working with different clients and collaborators
• Patterns for developing our own understanding, tailored to different ways of thinking
• Patterns for engaging with supply chains, local regions, and policy-making

The book is designed to grow over time, with contributions from readers showing how they’ve used and remixed the content for their own specific scenarios. In doing so, this builds stronger connections across a growing community of regenerative practitioners in industry.

Specific motifs in the Pattern Book that support interdependence include:

• The Second Site – deepening the connection between where we make and where we take
• Better feedback – understanding the conditions that allow better signals to flow between designers and the places their choices impact
• Carrier wave – tracing how information flows through projects
• System Survey – identifying the opportunities for, and barriers to, connection in different scenarios

Our mutual interdependence is nothing new. But as our communities and ecosystems reach the limits of the stress they can handle, that interdependence becomes harder to ignore.

This book helps designers work more consciously with shared connection.

You start by imagining the people who are going to read it.

Some readers will be interested in exploring regenerative design for themselves. Others will be looking for ways to introduce regenerative design to their colleagues or clients. In other words, you’re writing for multiple audiences at once.

And next, you lay out all the pieces of the story.

Some pieces we’ve been working with for years—like the Systems Bookcase, the Second Site, or the Living Systems Blueprint, models that James Norman and I set out in The Regenerative Structural Engineer.

Other pieces are less formal. They’re the anecdotes, the linking phrases, the small examples that spark curiosity.

With all these building blocks in front of you, the question becomes: what order would you place them in for each audience? What sequence could create a compelling journey?

It’s no different from building an effective pitch deck when you’re bidding for new work. You try different combinations. You see which slides land, which case studies resonate, which arguments bring people along.

That’s exactly what we’ve been doing in the Regenerative Design Lab, in our presentations, and across the training sessions we’ve delivered. Testing different ways to sequence the building blocks depending on the needs of the audience.

And that’s what The Pattern Book for Regenerative Design captures.

We call the building blocks motifs. We stitch these motifs together into patterns. Twelve patterns—for twelve different audiences.

Designers are teachers. We take people on a journey that gets them to say, “Yes, that’s what I want.”

Good teaching is rarely about setting out the whole picture. It’s about creating moments of tension—when we show something unfamiliar—and moments of release, when the learner sees how it connects to the problems they want to solve.

We create this rhythm through stimuli, provocations, metaphors, and experiments—arranged in different orders to create different effects.

The problem I’ve found since starting my work on regenerative design is this: every time we try to teach someone about it, the story changes. The sequence of arguments and the exercises that land best are different each time.

And then comes the aha moment—not just for the participant, but for me: there isn’t one way to hold a conversation about regenerative design. There are many. But some patterns do repeat. Certain framings are best introduced early. Others land better with technical audiences. Some metaphors bring sceptics on the journey.

That’s when I realised: we could distil these experiences into a set of repeatable sequences. Patterns of practice for different audiences, goals, and contexts.

Hence: a Pattern Book.

We see patterns,

We think in patterns,

We create patterns.

A pattern is something that repeats,

A drum beat,

An oscillation.

Patterns make things regular and therefore intelligible,

Patterns help us predict what will happen next.

Out of a sea of random events a pattern can feel like a life raft,

Or pieces to build a boat.

The dictionary tells us the word comes from the Middle English ‘patron’ meaning something to be followed,

What if the patterns we are following are no longer serving us? 

What if the drumbeat is no longer leading us in the right direction?

What if the oscillations are going out of control?

Then we need to learn to see new patterns,

We need to learn to think in new patterns,

And we need to create new patterns.

This new book is about learning to see and create new patterns of practice — ones that we can integrate into our work. Patterns that can help shift our industry from creating harm to creating thriving.