page_title: Regenerative design
section_title: Sustainable Design
hierarchical_section_title: Regenerative design / Green vs. sustainable vs. regenerative / Sustainable Design
context_page_description: Regenerative design is a process-oriented whole systems approach to design. The term "regenerative" describes processes that restore, renew or revitalize their own sources of energy and materials. Regenerative design uses whole systems thinking to create resilient and equitable systems that integrate the needs of society with the integrity of nature.
  Designers use systems thinking, applied permaculture design principles, and community development processes to design human and ecological systems. The development of regenerative design has been influenced by approaches found in the biomimicry, biophilic design, ecological economics, circular economics. As well as social movements such as permaculture, transition and the new economy. Regenerative design can also refer to process of designing systems such as restorative justice, rewilding and regenerative agriculture.
  A new generation of designers are applying ecologically inspired design to agriculture, architecture, community planning, cities, enterprises, economics and ecosystem regeneration.
context_section_description: ‘Sustainable’ and ‘green’ are for the most part used interchangeably however, there is a slight distinction between then. ‘Green’ design is centralized around specifically decreasing environmental impacts from human development whereas sustainability can be viewed for an environmental, economic or social lens. The implication is that sustainability can be incorporated to all three aspects of the Triple Bottom Line: people, planet, profit.
  The definition of sustainable or sustainability has been widely accepted as the ability to meet the needs of the current generation without depleting the resources needed to meet the needs of future generations. It “promotes a bio-centric view that places the human presence within a larger natural context, and focuses on constraints and on fundamental values and behavioral change.”  David Orr defines two approaches to sustainability in his book Ecological Literacy: “technological sustainability” and “ecological sustainability.”  “Technological sustainability” emphasizes the anthropocentric view by focusing on making technological and engineering processes more efficient whereas “ecological sustainability" emphasizes the bio-centric view and focuses on enabling and maintaining the essential and natural functions of ecosystems.
  The sustainability movement has gained momentum over the last two decades, with interest from all sectors increasing rapidly each year. In the book Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability, the Regenesis Group asserts that the sustainability “debate is shifting from whether we should work on sustainability to how we’re going to get it done.”  Sustainability was first viewed as a “steady state of equilibrium” in which there was a balance between inputs and outputs with the idea that sustainable practices meant future resources were not compromised by current processes. As this idea of sustainability and sustainable building has become more widely accepted and adopted, the idea of “net-zero” and even “net-positive” have become topics of interest. These relatively newer concepts focus on positively impacting the surrounding environment of a building rather than simply reducing the negative impacts.
caption: Sustainable design lies within a balance of economical, environmental and social responsibilities