Beyond Green: Changing Context - Changing Expectations

Chapter 1: Keynote Lectures

Raymond J. Cole University of British Columbia, Canada

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the changing context, expectations and priorities that directly and indirectly affect building environmental progress Whereas the current focus is on "green" design - reducing or mitigating the environmental consequences of buildings - the future concerns will embrace mitigation, adaptation to the new conditions and restoring previous adversely impacted regions and human settlements. The paper looks beyond current ideas of green building to the emerging notion of Regenerative design. The primary objective of the paper is to identify which dictates of Regenerative design could constructively reframe performance assessment tools.

1 INTRODUCTION Green building practices have become increasingly commonplace over the past decade, in part due to the introduction and widespread use of green building rating systems. While an important initial step, simply producing buildings that are incrementally better than current practice will prove insufficient to meet the requirements of a built environment that can support sustainable patterns of living. Within the context of climate change and rapid urban development, greater performance leaps will be necessary and at a faster rate. This will challenge many existing norms and expectations and, in particular, redefine how we conceive the design, construction and operation of buildings. Whereas the current focus is on "green" design - reducing or mitigating the environmental consequences of buildings - the future concerns will embrace mitigation, adaptation to the new conditions and restoring previous adversely impacted regions and human settlements. “Regenerative” design is emerging as perhaps the most comprehensive basis for rethinking the role of building as a catalyst that positively supports the co-evolution of human and natural systems. Moreover, its proponents argue that it is an approach which bridges physical and functional, emotional and spiritual attributes and set the relationship between humans and nature from a co-evolutionary perspective than a managerial one. This paper explores the changing context, expectations and priorities that directly and indirectly affect building environmental progress and looks beyond current ideas of green building to the emerging notion of regenerative design. The primary objective of the paper is to explore how the dictates of Regenerative design can constructively reframe performance assessment tools.

2 GREEN DESIGN Green building design is widely understood as the creation of buildings that are less re-

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source intensive, place less load on natural systems and offer higher indoor environmental quality than conventional buildings. The focus of green building design is environmental mitigation – doing less environmental harm than conventional buildings. In- creasingly, performance aspirations such as “Net-zero” energy, Carbon “neutral” and “One-Planet Living” are presented as embodying a situation whereby human activity – including building – must respect and live within the planet’s biophysical limits.

2.1 Green Building Performance Assessment Building environmental assessment methods have played a significant role in main- streaming green building and the major systems have been increasingly widely adopted by institutions and authorities as a required standard. Their increasing momentum suggests that it will continue to fulfill this role of raising performance expectations. LEED®, for example, was conceived to represent leading edge environmental performance and has become a prominent “brand” for green building practice in North America and increasingly worldwide. Although numerous changes and refinements have been made since Version-1 was first introduced in 1996, and will continue to be made, the success of the LEED® brand is also constrained on its continued development. The fun- damental structure of LEED® – the five major categories and constituent performance requirements – are now difficult for the US Green Building Council to change or for it to be easily reframed to reflect emerging ideas of the relationship between human and natural systems. All modifications or enhancements must be add-ons rather than funda- mental changes. Given this “lock-in” situation, other complementary tools are necessary to bring fresh, innovative and more comprehensive ideas to improving building design and construction practices. The Living Building Challenge (LBC), launched in August 2006, is emerging in North America as a recognised demanding and complementary performance aspiration to LEED®. Despite requiring all sixteen demanding performance requirements – including net zero energy – to be met before the designation of Living Building is granted, it is also quite similar to LEED® in many regards. Although a key initial concept within the LBC was that buildings should strive for greater self-sufficiency and security, the latest version “inserted the concept of Scale-Jumping to allow multiple buildings or pro- jects to operate in a symbiotic state – sharing green infrastructure as appropriate and allowing for Living Building status to be achieved as elegantly and efficiently as possible.” The notion of “inserted” is indicative of the need to expand and refine the requirements not envisaged in the initial conception. Moreover, while it references natural systems and uses a flower/petals metaphor, there is no recognizable organization of the issues based on ecological or systems theory. Similar to LEED® and the majority of other current assessment methods, the structure is simply a list of required performance requirements set within a defined set of categories.

3 SUSTAINABILITY 3.1 Sustainable Building Green building design typically covers “environmental” performance issues and human comfort and health requirements. The notion of “sustainable building” is increasing used in place of, or interchangeably with “green building” as a means of acknowledging social and economic issues. However, whereas it is possible to meaningfully describe environmental issues at the level of an individual building, this becomes more problem- atic for the social and economic dimensions of sustainability.

3.2 Sustainability Assessment A number of assessment tools have been introduced that expand on the range of performance issues to explicitly include social and economic criteria and thereby attempt to provide a measure of “sustainable” performance. The inclusion of these requirements

Chapter 1: Keynote Lectures are incorporated in a variety of ways but none have been explicitly directed at regenerative design or informed by natural systems and processes and their integration with social and cultural requirements.

4 REGENERATIVE DESIGN The term “regenerative” references the self-organizing and self-healing capabilities of living systems and implies their functioning and renewal. Regenerative design draws on these capabilities, along with the natural and cultural characteristics of ‘place,’ as drivers of design. Whereas green building design has focused on improving the environmental performance of individual buildings, regenerative design is equally attentive the consequences of the relationship between the building and its community context. In contrast to green design that typically addresses discrete performance features, Re- generative Design embraces systems thinking - emphasizing wholes over parts and process over structure. Buildings are not considered as individual objects, but rather are designed as parts of larger systems allowing complex and mutually beneficial interactions between the built environment, the living world, and human inhabitants. A systems approach applies equally to the various systems and components that comprise buildings and seeks positive synergies between them as a means of attaining an opti- mised system. This ensures that a constantly dynamic and responsive built environment evolves over time. These are not the underpinnings of currently green building environmental assessment tools, nor are they easily superimposed upon them. Eisenberg and Reed (2003), Reed (2006 & 2007) and the Regenesis Group1 identify a number of key attributes of Regenerative design that include: • It sits within the emerging notion of the built environment as a socio-ecological system – seeking the positive co-evolution of natural and human systems. • It regards the self-organizing and self healing properties of living systems together with the natural and cultural characteristics of ‘place’ as the drivers of design. • It unites functional, emotional and spiritual attributes of both nature and human systems as they relate to place. • It employs a process-oriented systems thinking approach. The basis is derived from natural systems with a closed loop input-output model or a model in which the output is greater than the input. • It concerns an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the elements that compose the entirety of the system.

Whereas green building design has focused on improving the environmental performance of individual buildings, regenerative design is equally attentive the consequences of the relationship between the building and its community context and, impor- tantly, a participatory approach in design that creates and maintains a positive relationship in a community through their engagement in the development process. Pedersen Zari and Jenkin (2008) identify a number of social benefits of a more participatory approach, including: • An improved correlation between user needs or aspirations and design outcomes. • The creation of stronger, healthier, more equitable communities and an enhanced sense of community. • Enhanced democratic processes. • An enhanced sense of physical and psychological health and well-being.

1www.regenesisgroup.com

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• An increased sense of ownership and belonging to the project. • An emphasis on understanding local traditions and indigenous knowledge, which can create and preserve cultural identity.

4.1 Systems Approach In contrast to green design that evaluates discrete performance features, Regenerative Design embraces systems thinking - emphasizing wholes over parts, relationships over things and process over structure. A systems-based approach is crucial. Buildings are not considered as individual objects, but rather are designed as parts of larger systems allowing complex and mutually beneficial interactions between the built environment, the living world, and human inhabitants (Pedersen Zari and Jenkin, 2008). A systems approach applies equally to the various systems and components that comprise buildings and seeks positive synergies between them. This ensures that a constantly dynamic and responsive built environment evolves over time. These are not the underpinnings of currently green building environmental assessment tools, nor are they easily superimposed upon them. Indeed within a system-based approach, design must not be constrained by are essentially the “artificial” legal bounds of site, but rather must work in the larger ecological system, both naturally and constructed.

5 FROM GREEN TO REGENERATIVE Settlement patterns and building practices together with other human activity have sig- nificantly altered and, in the majority of cases, degraded preexisting natural ecosystems. Restoration, as a necessary precursor to Regenerative Design, attempts to repair or re- turn a degraded site condition back to something resembling its previous biological health, such as Brownfield restoration and the “Daylighting” of streams. In contrast to the idea of restorative design, regenerative design refers to the emerging notion that the act of building design not only restores a preexisting degraded condition, but can act as a catalyst for subsequent self-improvement. Van der Ryn (2005) and Reed (2006) each present models illustrating an evolutionary spiral that moves from current building design, through sustainable design and restorative design, toward a regenerative condition. Van der Ryn (2005) presents a spiral that begins with standard practice opens and expands through “Green” design, “Restorative design” and finally “Regenerative” Design. Reed (2006) describes this process as one that also evolves in a gradual unfolding or emergence as the field changes and as our knowledge of whole systems matures. However, a key difference between the models presented by Van der Ryn and Reed is that the former suggests a continuing evolution from green to sustainable whereas the latter explicitly acknowledges the need for a fun- damental mental shift from a reductive, technical solution-based approach evident in current green building practice to one based on a holistic, living systems thinking.

6 CONCLUSIONS Green building assessment tools have been enormously effective in providing both a guide and measure of the ways and extent that buildings can be less resource intensive and place less burden on natural systems. This is a critical and necessary step, but one that must be viewed as precursor to rethinking the role of buildings rather than a final goal. This paper has explored the transition from green design and assessment to the re- framing of building environmental performance within the context of “Regenerative” design. Regenerative design is emerging as perhaps the most comprehensive basis for rethinking the role of building and development as a catalyst that positively supports the co-evolution of human and natural systems. However, while the scope and emphasis Regenerative design as well as its key attributes and dictates can be readily understood,

Chapter 1: Keynote Lectures its widespread adoption will require supporting tools to assist design professionals in making the transition from current green practice.

REFERENCES Charest, S., (2009) Ecosystem-based Design: Addressing the loss of biodiversity and nature experience through architecture and ecology, Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture dissertation, University of British Colombia Eisenberg, D. and Reed, W., (July 2003) “Regenerative Design: Toward the Re- Integration of Human Systems with Nature.” http://www.natlogic.com/resources/publications/index.html Pedersen Zari, M. & S. Jenkin. (2008) Value Case for a Sustainable Built Environment - Towards Regenerative Development, Wellington New Zealand, Ministry for the En- vironment Reed, W., (2007) Shifting from 'Sustainability' to Regeneration, Building Research & Information, 35/6, 674 - 680 Reed, W., (2006) Shifting our Mental Model – “Sustainability” to Regeneration, Paper presented at: Rethinking Sustainable Construction, Next Generation Green Buildings Conference, Sarasota, Florida, September 19-21, 2006 Van der Ryn, S. (2005) Design for Life: the Architecture of Sim Van der Ryn. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith

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