A clear and bold heading

Official Climate Week NYC events calendar

Regenerative Design – Embracing a New/Old Mindset

Event by: AIA NY Committee on the Environment, Building Brains Coalition, HKS Architects, Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization
Event format
In-person
Event duration
2 hours
Language
English
As regenerative design continues to gain momentum across the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, it is often presented as a new paradigm for proactively addressing climate change by design. However, many of its core principles are based on knowledge, culture, and practices built over millennia. This session explores how regenerative design builds upon enduring lessons from passive design, vernacular architecture, Indigenous knowledge, and systems thinking that have long worked in harmony with local climates, ecosystems, and available resources. Panelists will examine how an understanding of natural flows—of energy, water, materials, and living systems—can reshape contemporary practice, moving beyond efficiency and impact reduction toward restoring ecological and brain health, as well as community regeneration. By reconnecting with these time-tested principles through the lens of today’s climate challenges, attendees will discover how regenerative design represents not a departure from architectural tradition, but a return to a more holistic, place-based way of thinking about the built environment.