The song of the river

In this sequence of posts I’m collecting questions that can help me build a regenerative design palette. In regenerative design we use the living world as a design guide. This goes beyond mimicking living forms — beyond biomimicry — to understanding how  underlying systems work, the processes that give rise to form and that enable living systems to thrive in balance. 

Next on my list: how is information stored in this system?

We often think of information as facts or data — something that can be written down or recorded. The invention of computer memory, which stores information in sequences of ones and zeros, exerts a powerful influence of cultural understanding of what information is.

But the Oxford English Dictionary entry for information includes other definitions that can broaden our understanding and what we look for in living systems.  Information can also be what is expressed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.

DNA is perhaps the living world’s most impressive information code, with a base of four rather than our binary two. But this is only the starting point for thinking about natural memory. 

Tree rings store the story of rainfall and prevailing wind. Wider rings correlate with wetter years; asymmetric ones show the dominant direction of wind. And at a larger scale still, information sequences are also expressed in the shape of the hills, storing information through their form about the sequence of geological events over hundreds of thousands of years. 

At the Regenerative Design Lab, Bill Sharpe offered a beautiful way to think about this. In any system with flow, there are structures that shape the movement — like a river’s banks. But the flow is also shaping the structure — the water gradually re-sculpting the path of the river. 

I think of the river as a stylus. The banks are the groove of an LP. Together they play the song of the river.  A record of what has been played before — one that is updated with every performance. 

Our ecosystems are a rich record library of everything that has happened in a place. What happens, what used to happen, what no longer happens, what could happen again.

Information in genetic bases, in strata, in layers of growth, in physical form, in ways we are only beginning to notice, and I’m sure in many more that we haven’t.

The Library of Systems Change

Two participants at the regenerative design lab stand in front of three bookcases situated in a forest clearing. The books on the left bookcase are red, in the middle are blue and on the bookcase on the right they are yellow. The different colours represent H1, H2 and H3 respectively in the Three Horizons model

The Library of Systems Change helps us understand how we can make systemic change over time. It combines the future thinking of Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons Model with the systems organisation of the Systems Bookcase. It is another model James Norman and I developed in ‘the Regenerative Structural Engineer’, but which can apply to any system in engineering. The overall effect is a compelling visual model for how a system might change over time.

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Shifting the systemic barriers to regenerative design

The idea that construction should enhance ecosystems and communities rather than depleting them might sound like a given. After all, shouldn’t the world be genuinely better off, more resilient, thriving, and adaptable after we build something? This, in essence, is what a regenerative construction industry is all about.

However, when we start translating this approach to individual projects, we quickly encounter a plethora of barriers: supply chain restrictions, legislative hurdles, planning constraints, contractual structures, questions of long-term ownership, measurement and metrics, to name a few.

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Regenerative Design Spring Residential – welcome to the woods.

Image showing post-it notes on a piece of paper lying down on some leaves to illustrate the post 'spring residential welcome to the woods'

We are looking forward to welcoming our second cohort on the Regenerative Design Lab to Hazel Hill Wood for their spring residential visit.

The Regenerative Design Lab programme works with the seasons. We held interviews in the winter (when it was actually snowing) and are meeting in the spring where first shoots of ideas will emerge. Over the summer we will turn these ideas into experiments. And and we will harvest and share the fruits of these experiments in the autumn.

In this find out about what we do on our residential retreats and how it fits into the Lab programme.

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