Decision-making in regenerative design and development

Integrating net-zero and regenerative design processes with digital technologies in performance-based design and planning.

EU COST Action RESTORE is a funded Pan-European network of researchers and industry representatives from more than 40 countries. It focuses on pushing the built environment beyond net-zero towards regenerating and restoring it, working within the sustainable capacity of its ecosystems to prevent future adverse effects rather than mitigating them.

Objectives

• Investigating and deploying strategies and best practice that enriches places, people, ecology, culture and climate so they are at the core of the design task.
• Promote forward thinking and multi-disciplinary knowledge which contributes to enriching design within a use-centric approach towards comfort, health and wellbeing in harmony with urban and natural ecosystems reconnecting people and the built environment with nature.
• Dr. Bleil de Souza’s involvement in this project focuses on integrating regenerative design processes with digital technologies in performance-based design and planning, more specifically on: mapping, recording, and transferring knowledge from design decision-making in multiple disciplines to understand how they use different types of digital tools to produce evidence to substantiate design arguments and assess design proposals;
• Experimenting with different design methods seeking for transparency in design decision making by examining the role of design specifications and the production of evidence in enabling scrutiny and accountability of design proposals in relation to fulfilling sustainability goals and fighting climate change at different design scales (regional, neighbourhood and building).

These objectives feed to planned activities related to the development of guidelines to practitioners in the use of different design methods, evidence, and digital tools for design decision-making.

Publications

• Reith, A., Bleil de Souza, C. “Regenerative Buildings and Beyond: Scale Jumping Sustainable and Net-Zero Designs to Regenerative Neighbourhoods, Districts, Communities, and Cities" Special Issue in Sustainability MDPI.
• Forsberg, M. Bleil de Souza, C. 2021. Implementing regenerative standards in politically green Nordic social welfare states: Can Sweden adopt the Living Building Challenge? Sustainability MDPI Dec 2020. Sustainability, 13, 738.
• Naboni, E. Bleil De Souza, C., Peters, T., Havinga, L. 2019. Tools and data for holistic modelling: Simulating regenerative futures. (Book section) In: Naboni, E. and Havinga, L. eds. Regenerative Design for digital practice: A handbook for the built environment.  Bolzano IT, EURAC.

Funding

EU COST Action RESTORE – Rethinking Sustainability Towards a Regenerative Economy.

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