News Archives - Page 3 of 6

April 23, 2025April 28, 2025

Kicking Off a New Round of Critical Thinking Training

Today we launched a new round of our Critical Thinking Training Programme, designed to help teams make better decisions in a world of complexity, ambiguity and change.

The first session introduced core concepts that will run through the programme: from the evolution of the knowledge worker to the shifting organisational contexts in which people now operate. We explored how traditional, rational approaches to decision-making are no longer enough — and why today’s leaders need to tap into more diverse forms of insight, including systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and even intuition.

February 6, 2025February 12, 2025

Designing experiments in policy change – lessons from RDL Cohort 4 Session 6 hosted at Chatham House

On February 4th, our current cohort of the Regenerative Design Lab returned to Chatham House London. In this session hosted by our delivery partners, the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator, our aim was to deepen understanding of system change, policy change and the Ambition Loop model.

January 31, 2025February 3, 2025

Exploring Regenerative Design with Hawkins Brown

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.

January 30, 2025February 3, 2025

How to have ideas – workshop for DYSE

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.

December 17, 2024December 17, 2024

Unlocking the Power of Design Briefs: Workshop at the IDBE Masters Programme

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.

September 20, 2024September 20, 2024

Just updated, our regenerative design reading list

Three bookcases in a woodland, used to illustrate a post about our regenerative design reading list.

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.

July 22, 2024

Report Release Announcement: Exploring Policy and Regenerative Design

We are happy to announce the release of our latest report, detailing the findings from the third cohort’s six-month exploration into how policy changes can unlock regenerative design. Our report is now available for download, the findings of which offer a starting point for our next cohort investigating the intersection of policy and regenerative design.

July 8, 2024July 9, 2024

How to Have Ideas: Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There

Photo of Oliver Broadbent delivering the How to have ideas workshop - standing in front of a slide that says where do ideas come from

Last week, we were at the Institution of Structural Engineers delivering our ‘How to Have Ideas’ workshop to graduate engineers from Ridge Consulting.

Creative thinking is often the gap in the formal education and training of engineers. Yet, in the context of the climate emergency and a rapidly changing economy, creative thinking is crucial for developing designs that meet the needs of people and our wider ecology.

July 4, 2024July 4, 2024

Buying Bags of Kaleidoscopes: reflecting on how far ideas in teaching can travel

Photograph showing the sign outside the Cambridge university department of engineering

Today, Oliver concluded his series of six workshops as part of the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) Masters program in Cambridge. In this final session, participants reviewed the material covered over the last five sessions, spread out over two years, and set objectives for their continued professional growth.

The series of six lectures aimed to integrate collaborative design skills into the Masters program, focusing on both creativity and collaboration.

July 2, 2024July 2, 2024

The Pattern Book – a new collaborative project in regenerative thinking

Earlier this month, we unveiled the Pattern Book project, an innovative workbook designed to guide professionals in the built environment towards regenerative design principles. The Pattern Book is the next evolution in the development of the Regenerative Design Lab.

New patterns for the future

The Pattern Book aims to be an emergent, collaborative resource, offering a collection of tools, techniques, and resources under Creative Commons.

“We see in patterns, we recognize patterns, we create patterns. To create a world in which construction brings about thriving rather than destruction, we need new patterns for thinking about how we design and build,”
Oliver Broadbent