Oddly, I did almost the same thing for a recent talk, starting with googling ‘sustainable building’, and got a virtually identical set of images (no way to insert it here): all exteriors with massive amounts of greenery on them. Nothing showing other aspects of sustainable design. In other words, superficial.
Oddly, I did almost the same thing for a recent talk, starting with googling ‘sustainable building’, and got a virtually identical set of images (no way to insert it here): all exteriors with massive amounts of greenery on them. Nothing showing other aspects of sustainable design. In other words, superficial.
And I’ve been working up a post on the language of environmentalism generally, looking at some of our fundamental terms, many of which are problematic. Regenerative design is a decent candidate to replace sustainable design for all the reasons you mentioned, and I currently use it to describe the next level of thinking after sustainable design and systems thinking (in the evolution of environmentalism from 3Rs to Cradle to Grave to Cradle to Cradle (life cycle) to Sustainability to Systems Thinking to Regenerative). But I think it still doesn’t hit the spot, partially because regeneration is an unfamiliar and unrelatable word for most people.
And it needs to be something positive and enticing as well as easily grasped. Something that addresses McDonough’s point and incorporates flourishing or thriving. I’m workshopping some ideas but am not there yet.
Oddly, I did almost the same thing for a recent talk, starting with googling ‘sustainable building’, and got a virtually identical set of images (no way to insert it here): all exteriors with massive amounts of greenery on them. Nothing showing other aspects of sustainable design. In other words, superficial.
And I’ve been working up a post on the language of environmentalism generally, looking at some of our fundamental terms, many of which are problematic. Regenerative design is a decent candidate to replace sustainable design for all the reasons you mentioned, and I currently use it to describe the next level of thinking after sustainable design and systems thinking (in the evolution of environmentalism from 3Rs to Cradle to Grave to Cradle to Cradle (life cycle) to Sustainability to Systems Thinking to Regenerative). But I think it still doesn’t hit the spot, partially because regeneration is an unfamiliar and unrelatable word for most people.
And it needs to be something positive and enticing as well as easily grasped. Something that addresses McDonough’s point and incorporates flourishing or thriving. I’m workshopping some ideas but am not there yet.