xiii
topic fails to distinguish “philia” as an interior human experience from the physiological, cognitive
and health impacts and correlations of encounters with “bio.” In integral terms, such writers collapse
the subjective into the objective. In fact, there is a dearth of concrete biophilic design patterns with
useful spatial guidance for designers to create such deep and affiliative experiences of nature. Thus,
the Love For Nature pattern and its consequent “nature language” – connecting patterns of space
with patterns of ecopsychological experience – is well-timed.
A regenerative design approach will look to nature for its inspiration and model. Inevitably, one
arrives at the question of how human systems can be ordered in ways analogous to and integrated with
the order of nature’s systems. The structure, processes and distribution of ecosystems have evolved
over four billion years and constitute what works in the long term on Spaceship Earth. Nature’s
Design helps us locate development in places with the resources and absorptive capacity for human
life and also in places where sensitive and eco-productive systems are not harmed.
While nature can be a model for human design, biomimicry is far from enough to sustain regenerative design. John Lyle spoke of “human ecosystems” in which human activity and natural process are
always happening co-spatially. We are short on language that transcends the dualistic terms of nature/
culture, human/natural and design/nature. Regenerative Ecosystems is such a transcending pattern
that recognises all living systems as a manifestation of their underlying processes and flows of energy,
information, materials and organisms. Such new order, arising from the integration of all the species,
including humans and their processes, will give rise to authentic and novel form languages that are
sophisticated enough to handle their underlying regenerative patterns.
If you ask a restoration ecologist how to go about recreating the pre- settlement diversity of a site,
for example a degraded stream corridor, she will tell you that the sequence in which plants, animals,
resources and landscape structures, such as bank grading or dechannelising, are introduced is critical
to how the ecosystem develops and even what it ultimately becomes. The unfolding of the wholeness
at a later stage has to be embedded in the patterns of process and structure at each earlier stage.
Architects and urban planners mostly have no consciousness of this principle. Yet how can we expect
a rich, diverse and healthy urban human ecosystem without the Transformations of Wholeness
found even in a simple seed? This is fertile intellectual ground for the designer and connects the
design patterns to design processes and methods. Roös here is recognising that wholeness is an
unfolding incremental process, a necessary and, I will note here, difficult agenda.
Regeneration suggests the healing of places beyond the homeostasis implied by sustainability. It
has a vector to return settled landscapes to the richness, diversity and complexity – the aliveness – that
was present in earlier times when humans had little or no impact on ecosystem health. Yet, there is no
singular end climax state in nature. Thus, the design patterns that catalyse regeneration also have to
adapt to changes in the dynamic forces of nature and culture. Species evolve, weather systems change
and new technologies are invented. From the integral perspective, these changes might be lateralhorizontal, such as changes of a relatively temporary “state” in a system, for instance the rhythm of
seasons or the normal cycles of the economy. Changes can also be vertical-developmental in individuals, cultures and ecologies, as they move from one more or less stable “stage” to another, typically
increasing in complexity as they do. The Notion of Regenerative-Adaptive Patterns represents
a conceptual leap forward from all the major urban design and planning approaches, none of which
are equipped to deal with adaptation to significant change.
As a real theory needs testing, the book also provides a detailed application of its concepts, tools
and methods. The Evolutionary Adaptation pattern more directly addresses ideas such as ecological and settlement succession or development in complexity as the collective actions of residents over
time towards continuous improvement and self-transcendence.
Humans are now “the architects of the environment” in this Anthropocene epoch, as biologist
E. O. Wilson put it. The book’s final chapter questions whether or not humans can achieve a symbiosis
with Gaia. If so, will our responsive actions be the result of Gaia’s Revenge, that is, rebalancing
itself to adjust for the pesky species causing the inflammation? In that event, perhaps the pain of
The Made Order and the Given Order, Unfolding
topic fails to distinguish “philia” as an interior human experience from the physiological, cognitive
and health impacts and correlations of encounters with “bio.” In integral terms, such writers collapse
the subjective into the objective. In fact, there is a dearth of concrete biophilic design patterns with
useful spatial guidance for designers to create such deep and affiliative experiences of nature. Thus,
the Love For Nature pattern and its consequent “nature language” – connecting patterns of space
with patterns of ecopsychological experience – is well-timed.
A regenerative design approach will look to nature for its inspiration and model. Inevitably, one
arrives at the question of how human systems can be ordered in ways analogous to and integrated with
the order of nature’s systems. The structure, processes and distribution of ecosystems have evolved
over four billion years and constitute what works in the long term on Spaceship Earth. Nature’s
Design helps us locate development in places with the resources and absorptive capacity for human
life and also in places where sensitive and eco-productive systems are not harmed.
While nature can be a model for human design, biomimicry is far from enough to sustain regenerative design. John Lyle spoke of “human ecosystems” in which human activity and natural process are
always happening co-spatially. We are short on language that transcends the dualistic terms of nature/
culture, human/natural and design/nature. Regenerative Ecosystems is such a transcending pattern
that recognises all living systems as a manifestation of their underlying processes and flows of energy,
information, materials and organisms. Such new order, arising from the integration of all the species,
including humans and their processes, will give rise to authentic and novel form languages that are
sophisticated enough to handle their underlying regenerative patterns.
If you ask a restoration ecologist how to go about recreating the pre- settlement diversity of a site,
for example a degraded stream corridor, she will tell you that the sequence in which plants, animals,
resources and landscape structures, such as bank grading or dechannelising, are introduced is critical
to how the ecosystem develops and even what it ultimately becomes. The unfolding of the wholeness
at a later stage has to be embedded in the patterns of process and structure at each earlier stage.
Architects and urban planners mostly have no consciousness of this principle. Yet how can we expect
a rich, diverse and healthy urban human ecosystem without the Transformations of Wholeness
found even in a simple seed? This is fertile intellectual ground for the designer and connects the
design patterns to design processes and methods. Roös here is recognising that wholeness is an
unfolding incremental process, a necessary and, I will note here, difficult agenda.
Regeneration suggests the healing of places beyond the homeostasis implied by sustainability. It
has a vector to return settled landscapes to the richness, diversity and complexity – the aliveness – that
was present in earlier times when humans had little or no impact on ecosystem health. Yet, there is no
singular end climax state in nature. Thus, the design patterns that catalyse regeneration also have to
adapt to changes in the dynamic forces of nature and culture. Species evolve, weather systems change
and new technologies are invented. From the integral perspective, these changes might be lateralhorizontal, such as changes of a relatively temporary “state” in a system, for instance the rhythm of
seasons or the normal cycles of the economy. Changes can also be vertical-developmental in individuals, cultures and ecologies, as they move from one more or less stable “stage” to another, typically
increasing in complexity as they do. The Notion of Regenerative-Adaptive Patterns represents
a conceptual leap forward from all the major urban design and planning approaches, none of which
are equipped to deal with adaptation to significant change.
As a real theory needs testing, the book also provides a detailed application of its concepts, tools
and methods. The Evolutionary Adaptation pattern more directly addresses ideas such as ecological and settlement succession or development in complexity as the collective actions of residents over
time towards continuous improvement and self-transcendence.
Humans are now “the architects of the environment” in this Anthropocene epoch, as biologist
E. O. Wilson put it. The book’s final chapter questions whether or not humans can achieve a symbiosis
with Gaia. If so, will our responsive actions be the result of Gaia’s Revenge, that is, rebalancing
itself to adjust for the pesky species causing the inflammation? In that event, perhaps the pain of
The Made Order and the Given Order, Unfolding