The aim of this paper is to establish a broad overview of the impact urban areas have on biodiversity and to determine the predicted major impacts that biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation ...have and will have on the built environment. Common built environment responses to these impacts will also be examined. Regenerative design that uses the ecosystem services analysis method is proposed as a way of responding to biodiversity loss while simultaneously addressing climate change mitigation and adaption in a built environment context. This is examined for potential benefits and disadvantages.
Introduction Zari, Maibritt Pedersen
Ecologies Design,
2020
Book Chapter
Multiple drivers of change such as climate change, global biodiversity loss, and urbanisation are converging and causing unexpected, rapid, and difficult changes to human society. There is a need to ...design to mitigate causes of these issues and ensure adaption to rapidly changing world. While many designers seek to be more sustainable, there are those that push these boundaries and go beyond reducing negative ecological impacts to designing places for humans that actually become contributors to living networks of local and global ecologies, and have benefits in terms of human wellbeing. Several important themes emerge from the essays and case studies in this book. We are already quite good at getting our buildings to shelter us from the heat of a hot sun, from rain, and wind, but our buildings and cities could be doing so much more. We lack a coordinated sense that the breadth of regenerative performance is what we should aim for with built environment design.
Ngāi Tūhoe’s Te Kura Whare Partington, Jerome; Zari, Maibritt Pedersen
Ecologies Design,
2020
Book Chapter
The design and construction of Te Kura Whare, Tūhoe’s political and cultural hub in Te Urewera, Aotearoa New Zealand, was a critical step in providing the platform, and space for Tūhoe to engage with ...past and current issues stemming from colonisation, and was Aotearoa’s fist certified Living Building Challenge building. The core purpose for the building was one of regenerating the mauri (life force, vital essence) of Tūhoe and their relationship to Te Urewera. This case study chapter outlines the impact of Te Kura Whare on Tūhoe peoples, on local ecologies, and on the wider architecture and construction in Aotearoa. It provides a discussion of lessons for practitioners learnt from this important project, including that working with and learning from Indigenous cultures provides important and meaningful opportunities to shift built environment paradigms. The chapter concludes that changes are urgently needed to shift conventional architectural and design practices to embrace a more holistic notion of ecological design; one that embraces culture and greater meaning.
Global converging challenges including climate change and biodiversity loss create a need for immediate action to create a radically more sustainable built environment. This chapter, based on a ...series of conversations with Dr Dayna Baumeister of Biomimicry 3.8, explores emerging design approaches that can support regenerative design inspired by nature. Drawing on examples of applied projects, it highlights three fundamental lessons that have emerged from Biomimicry 3.8’s work on built environment projects. These learnings highlight the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, the role of time, expertise and fieldwork in informing ecological knowledge, and the intricacies of goal setting and performance measurement.
Introduction Connolly, Peter; Zari, Maibritt Pedersen; Southcombe, Mark
Ecologies Design,
2020
Book Chapter
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to take each realm or notion of ecology, as it relates to spatial design ...seriously and discover synergies between them in ways that only professionals and designers of the built environment can. Part 1 of the book investigates how architectural, urban, and landscape architectural design and practices can both integrate with and support the regeneration of biological ecologies in various ways. Part 2 focuses on spaces external to or separate from buildings, across cities and geographies, and focuses on the documentation of the social ecologies of urban and landscape space. While there is recognition of the need for changing built environment design and building practices, the interconnected character of practices and the living and built environments we practice into frustrates change. Part 3 investigates these issues and questions that emerge from them.
Conclusion Connolly, Peter; Zari, Maibritt Pedersen; Southcombe, Mark
Ecologies Design,
2020
Book Chapter
This book explores ecologies design, from holistic, multiple perspective notion of how Life works. To embrace the threshold, the shifting, the ecotone, permeability, and other aspects of how ...ecosystems work and function were all thought to be key in engaging with ecologies design. The need for interdisciplinarity and genuine exploration of multiple perspectives, needs, and drivers for design has been highlighted by Graves, and Reed and Haggard. The difference of time spent in field by designers, even more immersive ones, and ethnographers is significant. The advocacy for place based ecological communities of elements within design, and openness to accommodating connections and living fluctuations are key design tactics, with the designers acting as ‘aligned others’, and giving voice to ecological contexts. Design projects need to have a wider contextual responsibility than an immediate site, extending to a project’s material, energy, and water origins and uses, both as part of built environment assemblage, and over time as wider environment changes.
In Oceania, buildings and landscapes have evolved in various ways and forms over centuries and showcase the inextricable connection between Pacific peoples and their island and ocean environments. ...The continued existence of Pacific Island traditional architecture and landscape design (ALD) demonstrates the resilience of Pacific Island peoples and cultural knowledge. This chapter employs a place-based and Indigenous-centric approach to exploring traditional, nature-based ALD in Oceania using Samoa as a case study. The chapter argues that traditional knowledge must be front and center in the development of ALD strategies to produce interconnected ecological and human well-being benefits. Traditional knowledge must also be the foundation of ongoing efforts to adapt to changing climatic, political, and social contexts in the region. Models of urban design for climate change adaptation must adapt local traditional architecture centered upon circular and open style living, small-scale buildings, and the development of green spaces.
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