Regenerative Designs Australia

[Dominik Ransom]

Katiesays, We need to think more broadly about our projects to understand how the system or asset we are designing fits within its context and the micro and macro scale. This lens enables us to identify all the possible opportunities we can create to drive positive outcomes.

Katie has worked on projects ranging from individual houses and small office fitouts to major high-rise developments, centre precincts and infrastructure assets, where she has adopted passive design in buildings, services efficiencies, reduced materials consumption, sustainable water use, along with the integrated systems-thinking that comes with regenerative design.

Senior Sustainability Engineer, Zak Nicholson, agrees. He has always had a passion for developing solutions that enable systems to operate to their full potential and purpose. This conviction has also played a strong role in his career where he advocates for building designs that are fit for climate and Country, and designing environments that actively benefit both people and nature.

This has driven greater inclusive design/construction practices such as generating employment opportunities for disadvantaged and under-represented groups, Indigenous inclusion practices and procurement and workforce inclusion practices.

Katie rejoices that integration of services is a benefit we are seeing with the philosophy of regenerative design. She says, Design and construction teams can work together to recognise that they can have more broad ranging impacts through their work. For example, building a community centre can provide avenues for the public to learn and integrate with nature, constructing new transmission lines can provide an opportunity for introducing Indigenous land management practices, and a new commercial office tower can provide space for growing vegetables, or plants that will filter the air.

WSP provided sustainability design services to the Glenroy Community Hub to encompass a high standard of environmental performance including low-energy use and high-comfort to support the health and wellbeing of users.

A true embodiment of regenerative design, the Glenroy Community Hub is one of the first community centres in Australia to target Passive House-certification, as well as Petal certification from the Living Building Challenge. It has been designed to be an energy positive building, with goals of offsetting all operational greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a certification program and sustainable design framework that visualises the ideal for the built environment. It uses the metaphor of a flower because the ideal built environment should function as cleanly and efficiently as a flower.

The overall goal is that buildings become self-sufficient within their site, for instance through producing more energy than they use; as well as healthy and beautiful spaces which connect occupants through the creation of biophilic environments.

With global temperatures projected to rise by 2.5C in the next century, residential buildings and homes will need to become more resilient to withstand hotter temperatures, drier climates and more extreme weather events. This anticipated change in climate is a key consideration for all levels of government, and commitments are being made at local and international levels to address the impacts of climate change.

As a resource to regenerative development, Joel has worked for clients including communities, universities, government agencies, and private developers. He is core faculty at the Regenesis Institute, delivering The Regenerative Practitioner and Regenesis School courses to students worldwide. He is an active author and educator in permaculture and ecological design.

Pamela is a founding member of Regenesis Group and Regenesis Institute for Regenerative Practice, where she has worked with project development teams and community groups to build critical systems thinking skills and holistic planning processes and designs that can address complex systems problems and opportunities. She has taught The Regenerative Practitioner series since its inception in 2013, and is the co-author of the book Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability, published in 2016.

Bill Reed is an internationally recognized proponent and practitioner of regenerative development and integrative design. He has been a founding board member of the USGBC, a co-founder of LEED and a thought leader in the sustainability movement over the past three decades. He is a principal at Regenesis and has been a lead faculty member at the Institute, delivering The Regenerative Practitioner series since its inception in 2013.

Bill has consulted on over two hundred projects across six continents. He is the author of the book The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building: Redefining The Practice of Sustainability as well as dozens of articles and papers on integrative design and regenerative development, and has delivered keynote addresses and workshops at hundreds of conferences throughout the world.

Beatrice Ungard, Ph.D., is a core faculty member at Regenesis Institute and the founder of Soma Integral, a practice that offers regenerative business development services to both for-profit and non-profit organizations across diverse sectors. Beatrice brings 20+ years of strategic thinking and management experience, including a deep expertise in living systems approaches to organizational change, strategic management, and leadership capacity development.

Beatrice has taught strategic management and systems thinking for diverse MBA programs in the United States. She is a core faculty member at the Regenesis Institute. She holds a master of science and a doctorate from the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, USA and a diploma of architecture from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She lives near Los Angeles, California.

Shannon has been an early member of Regenesis since 2006, and has stewarded the development of the organization from our initial years pioneering the methodology of regenerative practice, through the development of our earliest education programs beginning with The Regenerative Practitioner in 2013, to the development of the nonprofit Regenesis Institute as a new organization dedicated to furthering the mission of growing the field of regenerative practice in communities around the globe. With a diverse background in business management, community organizing, grassroots art and environmental education, Shannon brings a multidisciplinary approach to her work at the Institute, and contines to steward the evolution of our programming as the field of regenerative practice grows and gains traction around the world.

Lucy-Mary is nested within the Ōpawaho Heathcote river catchment, known as South Christchurch (South Island, Aotearoa/New Zealand), where she lives with her partner Michael. She acknowledges the kaitiaki (indigenous custodians of this land) Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, and Waitaha.

Previously a child and adolescent therapist, she now works as a developmental facilitator, supporting turning-point moments for community groups and organisations aspiring to create regenerative impact. She has worked with the likes of Greenpeace, Callaghan Innovation, For The Love of Bees, and many others. She is also faculty and local host for Aotearoa cohorts of The Regenerative Practitioner Series. She continues to draw on her therapeutic skills, arts background, Celtic ancestry, and the mentorship of the late Caroline Robinson (regenerative pioneer in Aotearoa) to create meaningful co-creation towards co-evolution and oranga (wellbeing).

Marcus Sheffer promotes the application of regenerative approach to projects and organizations. After 12 years at the Pennsylvania Energy Office, he founded Energy Opportunities in 1993 to provide technical consulting on building energy issues, renewable energy systems, and the environmental impacts of human activities. Marcus is also a partner in 7group, a multi-disciplinary team of professionals developing the capacity of projects and organizations to affect how humans regenerate life through building. Marcus is a LEED Fellow, LEED Project Reviewer, Living Future Accredited Professional, and faculty for The Regenerative Practitioner Series. He co-authored The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building (published by Wiley in 2009) and The Pennsylvania Solar Manual (published by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection in 2006). Sheffer holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and a Master of Science degree in Public Administration.

Max is a designer, educator, and facilitator of regenerative thinking, equitable development, and green building. His broad background in architecture was foundational while at the U.S. Green Building Council, where he oversaw the majority of the first 500 LEED building certifications, supported technical development of nearly every USGBC program, and managed relationships with Google, Adobe, Autodesk, and others. Max has been cited/quoted in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other outlets. He leads regenerative urban community-university partnerships and community cohort support programs via Regenerative Nexus (a non-profit which he cofounded in 2011). He became a principal at 7group in 2021. Max is now engaged in and leading explorations on how to redesign systems of real estate development and community engagement via regenerative thinking and approaches. Max attended one of the first TRP programs offered, and joined the Institute as Faculty in 2021.

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