ABSTRACT
The greatest challenge facing humanity is the reinvention of the relationship between industrial civilization and the environment that sustains it. Globally, the green building movement is moving beyond conceiving of buildings as resource consumers toward regenerative design, where buildings are designed with inherent capability to be net resource generators. Regenerative design offers a global vision for a resilient and restorative built environment that contributes to a stronger, fairer, and cleaner world economy based on one simple truth: It is impossible to have healthy people on a sick planet. This chapter explores the emergence of regenerative design in theory and in practice. Regenerative design represents the transition to a built environment that embodies the capability of not only creating the conditions that support life and health but also repairing or restoring some of what has been degraded or lost. All regenerative architecture demonstrates that the built environment can produce a cascading series of benefits instead of externalized harm at every scale.
