#regenerative design

[neonalchemy]

[carlobattisti]

Sustainability, Restorative to Regenerative.

Sustainability, Restorative to Regenerative.

An exploration in progressing a paradigm shift in built environment thinking, from sustainability to restorative sustainability and on to regenerative sustainability.

Do you want to explore the new frontiers of sustainability? From the work of the COST Action CA16114 RESTORE: REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy, Working Group 1. Restorative Sustainability, hereis our first…

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[agritecture]

The Food Bank of the Future Could Be in a Post Office

A new proposal hopes to repurpose USPS infrastructure to help fight food insecurity in L.A. We are fascinated by urban building typologies like postal offices that are no longer in use. Regenerative approaches to these spaces, converting them into something productive (like a food bank) are representative of the vision of agritecture. We hope you enjoy this article about one concept for turning post offices in LA into food banks. What’s missing? We think that on-site production could be better represented in the idea. Read all about it:

In 2014, a white paper by the United States Postal Service’s Inspector General contemplated the future of the crumbling USPS system, toying with the idea of reinventing its declining infrastructure “to provide innovative services that would yield new revenue.” Total mail volume is down, and so is employment and revenue. Out of 30,000 USPS branches across the country, 17 percent have shuttered offices since 1971. But while you can most certainly repurpose a USPS box for extra paper storage, repurposing an entire USPS storage facility, on the other hand, is not as easy.

Last year, the city of Clearwater, Florida, debated turning its historic post office into some kind of entertainment space such as a restaurant, before the landmark building ended up on a closure list. But the latest effort to transform the USPS system comes from a group of students at Washington University, St. Louis, who propose using the existing infrastructure to serve the needs of food-insecure populations in Los Angeles.

The First Class Meal proposal won first prize at the Urban SOS: Fair Share—a competition that challenged students to find solutions to cities’ most pressing issues—led by AECOM and Van Alen Institute. The proposal, developed by students Anu Samarajiva, Irum Javed, and Lanxi Zhang, hopes to solve two problems at once by reinvigorating USPS services in decline to better solve Los Angeles’s growing food insecurity problem. An estimated 1.4 million people in Los Angeles County struggle with food insecurity and account for around 16 percent of the population—the highest share of food-insecure residents in the country.

The problem lies in storage and distribution. “There’s a disconnect,” says L.A. Food Policy Council’s Iesha Siler. “Nonprofits trying to tackle food insecurity don’t have a shortage of food—but it’s not in their business model to have trucks go pick up tons of food waste and then distribute it.”

After speaking with numerous hunger-relief agencies and food banks in Los Angeles, two major issues stood out to the students. “It came down to lack of warehousing space and storage and not having vehicles or volunteers to transport the food to the people who need it,” says Anu Samarajiva, a graduate student on the winning team who is studying architecture and urban design. Most people who are food insecure are also located in low-income areas, further burdened by food deserts, which makes transportation of goods all the more important.

The team’s proposal relies on postal service trucks picking up food donations from agencies, individuals, and grocery stores along their regular routes. Then, the trucks would either deliver the free food to specified households or take it back to the post office for later pick up. Underused postal facilities would be turned into food pantries where people can pick up goods, with select locations having “food-share walls”—refrigerated storage cubbies that can be transferred to similar walls inside the trucks. Additionally, users could schedule and track deliveries via the USPS app, says student Irum Javed, another member of the winning team. The team is currently in talks with the city of Los Angeles and the USPS. The team hopes to use their prize money of $25,000 to figure out an implementation strategy and ongoing funding model.

A model like First Class Meal tries to connect the dots, says James Johnson-Piette, CEO of the community sustainability venture Urbane Development. While he’s cautious about the costs of activating these USPS spaces—particularly the cost involved to refrigerate fleets of trucks—he says the idea has immense potential. “What’s the alternative? Building new infrastructure? Either way, the costs need to be measured and understood.”

One way for cities to push forward in urban planning and design, says the AECOM senior vice president Stephen Engblom, “is to start thinking and acting like a startup.” The country’s dwindling post offices then, could be the location of the next food-security startup. “All public spaces have life cycles,” says Johnson-Piette. “After that, we’ve got to find new ways to get the most out of them.”

SOURCE: CityLab

[agritecture]

RotterZwam's Mushrooms Bloom Below Ground

by Henry Gordon-Smith

"Hello! Anyone there?" Like a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic world, I knocked on the entrance to the abandoned Tropicana swimming resort in Rotterdam looking for my contact Nathan Surrett. "We're down here" I heard from the right and followed the voice down to a basement under the swimming pool to find the headquarters of these regenerative mushroom growers. 

RotterZwam mushroom growers believe in a society where cycles are closed, raw materials are exploited to produced food locally.  Therefore, we grow super fresh oyster mushrooms in Rotterdam wasted coffee grounds and sell them to restaurants and supermarkets in the nearby area.

I first heard about these urban mushroom growers through Zjef Van Acker at the Association for Vertical Farming. I was too curious about their space and business model to skip a visit during my travels to the Netherlands last week. What I found was a dynamic group of committed sustainability entrepreneurs, making a big difference one mushroom at a time. 

RotterZwam is a impact-driven business. Its unique business model involves making about 30% of their revenue off selling mushrooms to local restaurants. About another 30% is made from selling homekits for people like you to grow your own mushrooms at home. The rest of their revenue comes from something urban farms everywhere know a lot about: workshops and events. 

I simply love the work that RotterZwam is doing for a couple reasons. Firstly, they are regenerating an unused space and making it productive. Literally they are growing mushrooms below ground in an abandoned urban swimming recreation centre. That space, thanks to their leadership, is now being branded as “Blue City” and hosts a slurry of urban agriculture projects, maker spaces, and sustainability start ups. Urban agriculture works best when its greening grey space and to see RotterZwam's hanging bags of mushroom cultivation in previously used spa spaces and swimming pool changing rooms are a revelation to see! 

The second reason I love the work that RotterZwam does is because of their collaborative mindset. They are making money off growing and selling mushrooms but thats not enough for them. They want YOU to learn more about commercial mushroom growing and they do this through their Mushroom Master Program where you can learn all you need to know to start a commercial mushroom farm via e-books, a forum, and online courses. More than 29 entrepreneurs around the world have been trained how to cultivate and regenerate through funghi production. This open-source approach is admirable and important. 

Sign up for RotterZwam’s Mushroom Master Program today! 

[appalachianfuturism]

Sustainability is not Enough: We Need Regenerative Cultures

Aiming to design for systemic health may not save us from unexpected side-effects and uncertainty, but it offers a trial and error path towa

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We need to respond to the fact that human activity over the last centuries and millennia has done damage to healthy ecosystems functioning. Resource availability is declining globally, while demand is rising as the human population continues to expand and we continue to erode ecosystems functions through irresponsible design and lifestyles of unbridled consumption.

If we meet the challenge of decreasing demand and consumption globally while replenishing resources through regenerative design and technology, we have a chance of making it through the eye of the needle and creating a regenerative human civilization. This shift will entail a transformation of the material resource basis of our civilization, away from fossil resources and towards renewably regenerated biological resources, along with a radical increase in resource productivity and recycling."

[nextwavefutures]

A handbook for regenerative design: reviewing Oliver Broadbent’s “Pattern Book”.

A handbook for regenerative design

[letialia]

To really deliver change we need stories, not data. Connect better and deeper with people

[letialia]

Ecosystem restoration camp: a week spent in the Algerve learning about land restoration, agroforestry and reconnecting to nature and the community. A week where I learnt about kindness and giving back and what is possible through community action. Thank you Quinta Vale de Lama 🌱💚