Critical approaches to regenerative design - Detailseite

This seminar will introduce students to a range of perspectives and examples critically examining cultures of regenerative design that engage with ecosystem thinking in a wide range of fields of human activity, including agriculture, food and fibre systems, architecture and the built environment, ‘greening cities’ and increasing urban biodiversity.

Increasing socio-ecological damage and the urgent need for care, repair and recovery has led to calls for regenerative design as a means of wayfinding towards a just and sustainable life on earth. Aiming to (re)design the way we live to align with and support the functioning of natural ecosystems, regenerative systems thinking is being applied to fundamental fields of human activity, from the production of energy to cities, agriculture, food, fashion and finance. In Designing Regenerative Cultures, Wahl suggests that regeneration is about reconnecting people in place, designing prototypes that point to future possibilities, and creating a dynamic capacity to move forwards. As a situated practice, regenerative design is also aligned with building community and networking diverse local actors to self-organise and experiment with new ways of making and being.

However, regenerative movements are inherently social and political expressions of heterogenous cultures and desirable futures, and as such are deeply intertwined with contested pasts and relations of power and representation. Regenerative design models raise critical questions as to whose narratives of the past are being evoked, who has the right to speak for whom, and what is being remembered and what forgotten. Similarly, what concepts of the future are being imagined, by whom and for whom, and how might some forms of living be enabled while other possibilities are negated?

Hausarbeit