Introducing Regenerative Architecture

Abstract

The global-scale impacts of the Anthropocene have reached tipping points of order, resulting in the climate emergency. We are no longer able to carefully adjust our industrial practices to put this titan back into its box, and we must enter a new era of human development to meet our present needs. This involves restoring the living realm through bioremediating environments, enlivening communities, enriching soils, and rebuilding ecosystems as we live and work. The conservative net zero ambitions of “sustainability” cannot reverse our negative planetary-scale impact. A new approach to designing and engineering our habitats is needed. This introduction to the special issue on Regenerative Architecture takes a design-led approach to discuss how the practice of the built environment, through its imaginaries, materials, spaces, bodies, and technologies, can make a positive impact on the living world. Since we cannot solve the ongoing crises from within our present thinking, which has initiated and compounded our predicament, this special issue explores the work of regenerative architects who are urgently developing diverse and inclusive practices. These practices aim to transcend the habits, expectations, and blind spots that frame contemporary practices. Taking a radically experimental and inclusive interdisciplinary design approach, the emerging field of regenerative architecture is actively developing a range of new tools, technologies, models, experimental platforms, theories, buildable systems, and critiques for environmentally beneficial practices. The nature of this ongoing research is diverse and interdisciplinary, invoking new concepts and formats that search for ways of working with nature, both as a co-creator of places and as a net beneficiary of architectural interventions.