This is a report about modern theories of sustainability and the progression of regenerative design. I utilize a framework of sustainability put forth in 2001 by Simon Guy and Graham Farmer to analyze the content of the Beyond LEED Symposium held in January, 2012 on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Using the six logics of sustainability proposed by Guy and Farmer; eco-technic, eco-centric, eco-aesthetic, eco-cultural, eco-medical, and eco-social, I examine the results of the symposium and determine which of these logics is being employed in the development of a new, regenerative design paradigm. I will also examine whether or not the Guy and Farmer framework of sustainability, and its contained logics, represent an incomplete definition of contemporary theories of sustainability. The results of this study and of the Beyond LEED Symposium suggest a change in how we think about sustainability and regenerative design. / text

Home environments pose a number of challenges for environmental justice. Healthy homes in healthy neighborhoods are often inaccessible due to socioeconomic factors, environmental racism, and/or environmental gentrification. Publicly funded home repair programs increasingly strive to both improve environmental health conditions and to reduce energy bills for low-income homeowners. Such programs have been intended to stimulate reinvestment in neighborhoods experiencing blight and more recently to reduce gentrification pressure in neighborhoods experiencing rapid reinvestment. While such programs do not represent a silver-bullet solution to the accessibility of healthy housing, the question remains: “What is the potential of low-income home repair programs to serve as a leverage point for environmental justice in urban home environments facing gentrification pressure?” This question is investigated through performance evaluation case studies of three municipally funded, low-income home repair programs in Austin, Texas intended to ameliorate gentrification and advance outcomes related to environmental justice. The findings suggest that as a site of intervention, dialogue, community connection, and resource-mobilization, home repair programs have potential as leverage points in regenerative community development that advances environmental justice performance outcomes. Actors in home environments can increase their performance with the support of the home ecology paradigm (HEP), a synthetic research paradigm that draws from sustainability science, environmental justice, and social learning literature to renew an action research paradigm established by Ellen Swallow Richards in the late 1800s to advance healthy community design and development. Guided by a vision of environmental justice, equipped with tools supporting holistic, multi-scalar systems-thinking and regenerative dialogue assessments, and engaged in a practice of resilient leadership, such actors can more deftly dance with the co-evolving systems of their home environments. In so doing, they increase their potential to directly enhance the material, social, and ecological conditions of life in the present, while also cultivating the capacity of these living systems to adapt resiliently to future disruptions. Furthermore, beyond producing life-enhancing performance outcomes, the HEP also appears to support actors in an engaged praxis that enhances their moment-by-moment experience of life and the vitality of living systems in the present.

DESIGN OF A BAKERY IN ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA Through the evolution of a baker's practices, we can understand the transitions of matter between bread, body and building. The food soil waste system of the bakery becomes an evolutionary process of recovery, remediation, restoration, replenishment, and reuse. / Master of Architecture / Through the evolution of a baker’s practices, we can understand the transitions of matter between bread, body and building. The food soil waste system of the bakery becomes an evolutionary process of recovery, remediation, restoration, replenishment, and reuse. “There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.” (Steinbeck, 2008) Learning from the skies above and ground beneath, I propose a horizon that binds the two in a closed loop system. As a baker combines earth, water, wind, and fire to transform dough into bread, the bakery is designed to knead these same elements together to create a harmonious relationship between man and nature.

Algal blooms and the reduction of the seabed’s oxygen have a particularly negative impact on the Baltic Sea, caused by the eutrophication process. The process of eutrophication involves the gradual enrichment of a body of water, or portions of it, with minerals and nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. In Sweden, agriculture is the source of almost half of the nitrogen and phosphorus released into the environment. (Swedish Board of Agriculture 2013) As a result of eutrophication catalysed by climate change, marine biodiversity and fish stocks suffer also reducing the welfare of citizens. Around 30% of the total nitrogen inputs come from atmospheric sources, mostly combustion operations connected to shipping, road traffic, energy generation, and agriculture. (HELCOM 2017) Despite the fact that nutrient leakage has decreased in recent years, 97% of the surface of the Baltic Sea is still affected by eutrophication (HELCOM 2017). Taking this as an emergency call, research aims to investigate on how architecture can become a catalyst for environmental regeneration, resulting in a net positive outcome. The research refers to the theory of regenerative design, which has received particular attention in recent years in addressing constraints of sustainability. The design proposal aims to spatialize regenerative processes operating on different scales, from bio-material development to an urban masterplan. The research envisions a regenerative approach to the Baltic Sea by introducing a network of interventions operating on the transitional zone between agricultural fields and rivers transmitting nutrient pollution to the sea as part of its catchment basin. The design proposal integrates regenerative strategies learned from case studies and a literature review. Research speculates on how to reduce excessive nutrient enrichment in soil, water and decrease anthropogenic nutrient loading, while engaging with the local community through eco-recreation. Enlisting nature as a guide and referring to biomimicry as the model, the network of various functional zones suggests bioremediation of polluted agricultural fields. At the same time proposal providide alternative platforms for cultivation and recreational infrastructures closely related to an adjusted urban fabric applied in the territory of Umeå in Sweden.

Submitted by Marco Antônio de Ramos Chagas (mchagas@ufv.br) on 2018-09-12T13:40:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 8868545 bytes, checksum: 225b7493537273bf0f117f47c3629351 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marco Antônio de Ramos Chagas (mchagas@ufv.br) on 2018-09-12T13:41:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 8868545 bytes, checksum: 225b7493537273bf0f117f47c3629351 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marco Antônio de Ramos Chagas (mchagas@ufv.br) on 2018-09-12T13:41:22Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 8868545 bytes, checksum: 225b7493537273bf0f117f47c3629351 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-12T13:41:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 8868545 bytes, checksum: 225b7493537273bf0f117f47c3629351 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Cities are at the core of current environmental problems and, conversely, may host the solutions for them. They are the defining ecological phenomenon of the twenty-first century. Natural patterns and processes within cities might be a means toward an ecological regeneration of their bioregions through a symbiotic relationship between them. In this context, design has a great potential to reshape cities, transforming them for improved living conditions and balanced ecological systems. Considering buildings and landscapes as reciprocal entities within a system is a great opportunity for design innovation and increased performance with an active engagement between people and nature. By assuming the ecosystem services approach as a reference for highest ecological performance when multiple ecosystem services are provided within a system, this dissertation proposes an urban ecosystem services framework and the concept of service providing design for assessing architecture and landscape architecture. This framework is the basis to analyze three rating systems that are the most relevant standards for sustainable and regenerative design of architecture and landscape architecture, being the Living Building Challenge â , LEED â , and Sustainable SITES Initiative â . Furthermore, two architecture and landscape architecture certified and high-performance projects are analyzed. Based on the analysis, other ecosystem services beyond those proposed in the framework are identified, being renewable energy sources and active living. Some ecosystem services considered are not required by the rating systems, and not provided by the projects, being medicinal resources, pollination, and spiritual experience. Although required, food production is not provided in the projects studied due to a scale issue as they are located in densely occupied urban sites. Moreover, SITES is currently more related to ecosystem services than LEED, which suggests that the ecosystem services framework has a great potential as a tool to explore the relationship of building design criteria and natural systems and cycles. Although most ecosystem services are identified as provided by the two assessed projects, their performance suggests that they are not yet fully integrated to the natural ecosystem. This fact corroborates to the necessary next step for defining the Urban Ecosystem Services Framework in a quantitative approach with a hierarchical organization of the ecosystem services. Rigorously addressing the ecosystem services approach in LEED, SITES, and other rating systems will help integrate ecological regeneration processes in architecture, landscape architecture, and cities.

How can architecture positively impact on the development of integrated economic, social and ecological systems in an urban precinct? This dissertation is about the role that architecture can play as a systemic tool in the form of a brewery to facilitate regeneration in the urban context of Marabastad. Through the theories of regenerative design, systems theory and the non-modern thesis, an architecture of participation between various existing networks on site is established, that empowers resident traders while creating new opportunities for production, retail and social interaction. These activities are rooted in their context and participate in natural cycles and systems. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

This design project explores the viability of DIY regenerative energy projects, while challenging Eurocentric scientific and engineering norms within a (post)colonial climate emergency. Intervening at the energy-water-sanitation-agriculture nexus from a socio-ecological standpoint, the aim of the project is to fabricate low cost urine-fed Microbial Fuel Cells using non-specialist materials and equipment, and to visualise/ materialise the energy from the devices in a tangible form, in an inherently pedagogical activity.  Stemming from a concern that high-end investigations into renewable energy technologies are insufficient in tackling sufficient socio-ecological issues in their reductionist approach, the project assesses the possibilities of energy democratization from a synergistic standpoint. Working within the framework of Regenerative Design and Appropriate Technology,  I point out that Western Technological "progress", which is often used as justification and perpetuation of colonial projects, is degenerate and inappropriate, and should be reframed as such.  Translating cutting edge bioenergy research into demystified, easy to replicate forms, a large component of the project consists of an intensive material exploration, with the goal of accessibility over efficiency as the most important factor. Aiming for the research to be distilled into a workshop form, in addition to online documentation hereof, proved beyond the reach of the timeframe. However, as a public introduction to this phase of the projects, research made during the project timeline is artistically articulated and presented to the public within the context of an exhibition, to stimulate public participation with the project and the ideas and issues contained herein.

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As the world reckons with an uncertain future at the hands of global climate change and biodiversity loss, the question of how to proceed seems ever more urgent. Approaches to sustainability in design tend to focus on technological solutions to what is often presented as a technical problem. This approach overlooks the ways in which the forces that have led us to this point are born out of our cultural story of what it means to be human, what the natural world is, and what our relationship is to it. This is the story that has permitted if not encouraged the kind of development that has led to global warming and extensive loss of biodiversity. If we are going to reverse these trends we must tell a new story – one that, among other things, removes humans from the center of the conversation, acknowledges the interconnectedness of things, and values multi- and extra-sensory ways of knowing. This thesis asks the question, “What might architecture look like if we held these beliefs and if we told ourselves a new story?” The thesis explores ways in which architecture can continue to advance the practice of sustainable design by embodying, encouraging, and reflecting this New Story. The theory is put to the test via a curated experiential journey, culminating at a tower in the middle of a forest. The design at once exemplifies New Story ideals and offers a place to dream about new ways of being and building.