Designing For A Regenerative Future

By Drew Lavine, AIA | LFA | LEED AP BD+C | Partner + Director of Design, Re:Vision

AIA Philadelphia Board Director of Sustainability + Preservation

A non-architect friend recently posed the question to me of what my “white whale” project would be. I’m pretty sure they were expecting me to say a museum or a concert hall or a skyscraper. My immediate reaction, though, which I’ve chewed on since, was not “what” the project would be, but “why” it would be needed and “how” it would happen.  

The past decade has been a tough one for those of us in the sustainability industry. It’s been a period of existential reckoning with the very idea of “sustainability” and realizing that we didn’t hit the targets that we knew mattered most. We didn’t move far enough fast enough and our world is now letting us know daily through ever more frequent ecological, social, and economic crises.  

The “why” of my white whale project is that it has to do more to make up for our collective lost ground – it will be “regenerative”. Sustainability isn’t good enough any more - we need to shift our built environment past that neutral fulcrum towards benefit. Every regenerative project we put in place has the power to improve the world we are a part of for generations to come. More than its direct function, a regenerative project actually has the effect of amplification as it propels individuals, communities, and even ecosystems into regenerative states. 

“How” we are going to do this is by a collective reshaping of our work. This means challenging who we work for, who benefits from our work, how our work is in community with the community (both people + nature!), and how our work supports a designed successional growth of our industry. This will not happen by waiting to receive RFPs. We have to make it happen ourselves. 

It’s time to stop asking for permission for sustainability on our projects and to start designing for a regenerative future.