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COLUMN
Regenerative design,
the next conversation of
Green-built environment
Why going ‘Green’ is merely the opening chapter towards
the better built environment we need to be in
A
reality check indeed.
Recently I gave a talk in
the World Diabetes Day
(14/11/14) awareness
exhibition which was held
at KLCC Esplanade, in partnership with
Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company
which manufactures one fifth of
the world’s insulin supply. So you may
be thinking, what does a green building
consultant have to do with World
Diabetes Day? Winston Churchill
once quoted “We shape our buildings,
and afterwards our buildings shape
us”. The evidence of us unveiling the
pandora’s box of urban planning is
irrefutably obvious, from the increasing
occurrence of flash flood around
the greater Klang Valley, to being a
nation rated as the highest among
Asian countries for obesity. It nonsensical
to place an escalator serving a
gym, neither designing a wide spread
horizontal city that requires ever stationary
human beings sitting in their
carbon releasing machines crawling
across the miles when they could just
walk actively in a multi usage medium
density vertical city.
Cities are the physical testimonies
of any civilization success, be it the
famous historical landmarks, ever
increasing modern skyscraper, efficient
public transportation system
or the public squares and parks.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that our built
environment revolves closely with
the driving force of economics today,
which has subsequently caused many
externalities which are not accounted
for. One of it is public health impact
and community well-being which I
had elaborated during the talk then.
It is exciting to see the progressive
growth of green building wave which
is participated by various authorities
and property markets ever since
Green Building Index was introduced
in 2009. To date, GBI has charted 100
million square feet of green buildings
certified and many related built environment
stakeholders are proposing
various alternative green building
rating tools.
Gene-Harn
currently
works as
a Green
Building
Consultant
at IEN
Consultants
based in
Bangsar. The
architecture
masters
student is
passionate
towards the
potential
benefits of
sustainable
urban design
and green
buildings
towards
the aspect
of social,
environment
and economy
for a better
world.
Redefining Sustainability
through Sufficiency Themed
Design Process
However, one needs to be cautiously
optimistic because even with the
entire city and all buildings certified as
‘green’, that is merely solving the tip of
the iceberg of our built environment
complexity issues. Sustainability is a
noble ambition, but one I believe is short
sighted and increasingly meaningless
in today’s developing world. Even, the
word “Sustainable Development” is
probably the most oxymoron term ever
existed. Simply due to the fact that it is
not possible for an infinite growth on a
finite planet, this is also even if you have
a very low carbon or ecological footprint
per capita, but with a projection of 10 billion
population by 2030.
If one is to evaluate the true sustainability
of our built environment, one
has to look at regenerative design, the
process oriented systems theory based
approach to design, or, to design the
way of our city. Communities should
restore natural capital and produce
Insight By Gene-Harn
positive externalities, in contrast to the
current, much economic development
centric building industry progress
which means little for mankind progress.
Regenerative design develops a
mutually enhancing relationship with
the earth. It augments the capacity
of existing resources and systems,
rather than depleting or simply maintaining
them. If we measure our built
environment performance against the
following 6 aspects and 3 fundamental
principles, it is clear that our current
state of green building wave progress
is incommensurate to the rate of
deterioration of our built environment
in respect to the holistic principles of
regenerative design.
FOOD AND SOIL
Soil is Gold. Soil is a non-renewable
resource that is often taken for granted.
While the green revolution in agriculture
is credited with allowing relatively
few farmers to feed over 7 billion people
across the world, it has been extremely
damaging to the natural health and
productivity of the soil as well as the
social fabric of rural communities.
There is a finite amount of arable land
in Malaysia alone which is only 8% of
total area space, and we need to use
land judiciously and according to its
capabilities and assets. The factuality
of nature cannot be our total morality,
but by being ignorant of nature we are
ignorant of our limits as well as our possibilities.
Most of us simply do not know
the origins of the food on our plates
and also where does the 930 tonnes of
Malaysia food waste go to daily.
There is an urgent need to decentralize
and relocalize growth, variety,
distribution and waste handling of food,
to replenish and rejuvenate the soil by
closing the nutrient loop, to encourage
urban permaculture trend to be commercially
recognized. The crucial fact is
that by decentralizing and encouraging
community sufficient food system,
there will be food security through
localized food sovereignty. Both
30
november-december, green+.2014