Just sharing some news of a big milestone in this work: the Commissioners have signed off the final report for my Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Fellowship in Regenerative Design.
This warrants news longer post but for now the short version is this.
In 2023 I began the Fellowship with the aim of helping the built environment shift from a paradigm of harm to one of healing.
What became clear early in that process was that regenerative design isn’t something you simply teach, apply or deliver. It’s a way of thinking that develops over time, through action and reflection, across a wide range of actors playing different roles in systems change.
This realisation shaped the work that followed:
- The development of a shared toolkit and language for regenerative design, first published in the Regenerative Structural Engineer and further developed in the Tools for Regenerative Design section on this website.
- The evolution of the Regenerative Design Lab as a place to develop, test and reflect on regenerative thinking
- Scaling of this thinking and this community of practice through the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.
Personally the process has been stretching, demanding, and, honestly, sometimes overwhelming — but I feel it has precipitated a huge amount of work that I believe makes a significant contribution to figuring out what we should be doing next as an industry.
One thing I’m sitting with today – if you are in the midst of thinking about regenerative design, and find it slow-going and challenging then you are probably working in the right space. The elements of a regenerative future surround us; we just need to figure out how to rewire and reinforce them to create something thriving out of our work.
I am deeply grateful to the Commisioners for trusting me with this brief and for supporting this work. I am excited to share more about where this goes next.
More on that soon.