Chrisna du Plessis : Designing for Hope

We are entering a time of change, a time when many tipping points will be passing triggering unexpected consequences for our way of life. This is the prevailing message of the sustainability discourse. Yet it is also a time of great opportunity, a time where it is possible to work towards a thriving, if different future.

There is increasing awareness that Green Building by itself is not enough, and that sustainability is merely the baseline we need to establish in order to turn around the current situation of social inequity, large-scale environmental degradation and the potential for catastrophic climate change. We, as a global society, need to actively create a positive and abundant future through mindful, contributive engagement that is rooted in a living systems based worldview. Concepts and practices such as Regenerative Development, Biophilic Design, Biomimicry, Permaculture and Positive Development provide inspiration to anyone working in the built environment, whether they are designing spaces and places, systems and processes, or simply new ways of being in the world – allowing them to find their own way of contributing to the creation of a thriving future. But it also requires a personal transformation from the protagonists in the story of the built environment – a change in values, attitude and relationship with the world.

Drawing on interviews with fifty two internationally renowed academics, built environment practitioners, and some enlightened clients, this paper explores the potential for the production of the built environment as a means of regenerating, co-creating and evolving social-ecological systems from the local to the global scale. It aims to point out the pathways that would lead us into a thriving future in a regenerative world, providing a hopeful message to counteract the gloomy contraction mentality of the prevailing sustainability discourse.