Bill Reed on the Hierarchy of More Inclusive Environmental Design Approaches

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Bill Reed on the Hierarchy of More Inclusive Environmental Design Approaches

Bill Reed:

"Note that these levels of the sustainability trajectory are not exclusive of one another, they are a progression, and each is nested in the more whole level.

All practice levels are necessary to achieve the change required:

Issue-based approaches (fragmented as currently practised)

Limiting the damage

High-performance design

"Design that realizes high efficiency and reduced impact in the building structure, operations, and site activities. This term can imply a more technical efficiency approach to design and may limit an embrace of the larger natural system benefits.


Neutral

Green design

A general term implying a direction of improvement in design, i.e. continual improvement towards a generalized ideal of doing no harm. Some people believe this is more applicable to buildings and technology.

Sustainable design

See ‘Green Design’ with an emphasis on reaching a point of being able to sustain the health of the planet’s organisms and systems over time.


Living system approaches (increasingly more whole)

Restoration

Restorative design

This approach thinks about design in terms of using the activities of design and building to restore the capability of local natural systems to a healthy state of self-organization.


Reconciliation design

This design process acknowledges that humans are an integral part of nature and that human and natural systems are one.


Regeneration

Regenerative design

This is a design process that engages and focuses on the evolution of the whole of the system of which we are part. Logically, our place – community, watershed and bioregion – is the sphere in which we can participate. By engaging all the key stakeholders and processes of the place – humans, other biotic systems, earth systems, and the consciousness that connects them – the design process builds the capability of people and the ‘more than human’ participants to engage in continuous and healthy relationship through co-evolution. The design process draws from and supports continuous learning through feedback, reflection and dialogue, so that all aspects of the system are an integral part of the process of life in that place. Such processes tap into the consciousness and spirit of the people engaged in a place, the only way to sustain sustainability."

(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09613210701475753)