Regenerative Design and Living Systems

July 5 – 16, 2010

One or two-week course

Teachers: Bill Reed, Ben Haggard
Guest lecturers: Bill Rees, Michael Pawlyn

Course Overview

The leading edge of sustainable building, planning and design is moving beyond the greening of parts (such as buildings or infrastructure) into an approach known as regenerative development. In this approach, all the living systems that make up a place – the resident community, the affected ecosystems, and other human stakeholder groups – are integrated and oriented towards a common purpose, which is that human settlements and activities should contribute to the health of the living places of which they are a part. The renowned scientist E.O. Wilson has pointed out that “If you save the living environment, it automatically will save the physical environment. If you just save the physical environment (as we’ve come to understand it), we’ll lose both”. Regenerative design draws on a host of other disciplines (such as permaculture and integrative design), and has been successfully used in communities such as Gaviotas and Curitiba. It is applicable to both urban and rural communities.

Course Detail

Week 1: Ben Haggard & Bill Rees

The first week of the course will introduce participants to a process of systemic thinking, engagement and design. They will be given opportunities to practise observation, pattern recognition and interpretation, collaborative thinking and development of a framework for understanding a place as a living and evolving whole. This understanding will be applied to the development of principles and concepts for design. A local watershed and community will be explored through experiential fieldwork and analysis, enabling participants to really get to grips with the process of understanding living system patterns. During this week, Bill Rees will discuss with participants the implications of ecological footprint analysis (which he developed with Mathis Wackernagel in 1992) for this design process, setting it within a global context of resource over-use. He argues that cities as we currently know them will have to be reinvented as self-reliant regional eco-city states and will investigate how a systemic design approach can bring this about.

Week 2: Bill Reed & Michael Pawlyn

Using a local design project, participants will be invited to extend their design thinking from week one to raise and explore relevant integration issues (such as building systems, infrastructure, ecological restoration, and stakeholder engagement). This will help them address the practical challenges of reconciling an entirely new design approach with an existing and change-resistant development infrastructure. Michael Pawlyn will join the group for a discussion of biomimicry’s application of biological principles and how it compares with the regenerative design approach.

NB: Week 2 builds on and explores further ideas discussed in week 1. Therefore participants on week 2 must either have undertaken the first week or have an existing knowledge of similar content.

This course is intended for intermediate to advanced practitioners; those who have come to realize that a technical and efficiency approach to sustainability is insufficient to achieve a sustainable condition and are ready to delve deeper into experiencing and the practice of living system design.

Teachers and Guest Lecturers

Bill Reed is an internationally recognized proponent and practitioner in sustainability and regeneration. He is a principal in three firms: the Integrative Design Collaborative, Regenesis, and Delving Deeper – green building consulting, living system design, and education organisations working to lift building and community planning into full integration and co-evolution with living systems. www.integrativedesign.net and www.regenesisgroup.com. His work centres on creating the framework for and managing an integrative, whole-systems design process. The objective: to improve the overall quality of the physical, social and spiritual life of our living places and therefore the planet.

Ben Haggard is a founding member of Regenesis. He has helped develop models of thinking that integrate ecological and living systems approaches with large-scale development. He has worked with developers and design teams, governmental agencies, city planning departments, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and others to apply the discoveries of Regenesis to a broad range of community development issues and contexts. He has spent 25 years designing ecologically appropriate landscape and reclamation projects. His award winning designs have been featured in a number of magazines and newspapers, including Architectural Digest, Garden Design, National Wildlife Magazine, Sunset, and Organic Gardening. He served for 4 years as chief designer and Land Research and Education Director at the Sol y Sombra Foundation, a private conference center and permaculture demonstration site in Santa Fe. Project work has included housing developments, parks, watershed, educational and non-profit institutions, and ecological resorts. Ben served as a Commissioner on the Sustainable Santa Fe Commission, helping them develop a long term plan for community sustainability.

Bill Rees is Professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, focusing on ecological economics and human ecology. He is the originator of the ecological footprint concept, which he co-developed with his PhD student, Mathis Wackernagel. He is currently writing on and researching the ecology of human settlements.

Michael Pawlyn set up Exploration in 2007 to focus on environmentally sustainable architecture inspired by nature. From 1997 to 2007 he worked with Grimshaw Architects and was instrumental in the design development of the Eden Project. He was responsible for leading the design of the Biomes and proposals for a third major climatic enclosure. He has recently been commissioned by the Royal Institute of British Architects to write a book on Biomimicry in Architecture.

Course Fees

One week: £750, Two weeks £1,400
(Participants booking week 1 are encouraged to book for week 2 also – see text above)

All course fees include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.

For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College

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Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.