Beyond Human Cities: Nature’s Voice At The Design Table

12 February 2025

With a full house Cox Architecture , our first event of the year was a huge success!

The session chaired by Dr Sarah Bekessy and presented by biodiversity thought leader Dr Cristina Hernández Santín Hernandez who artfully and engagingly orated her findings on Biodiversity Inclusive Design (BID) to celebrate the culmination of her PhD and how we can and must get “Natures voice at the design table”.

Three critical things to think about are:

Collaborate: Work with nature and its patterns.
Design Beyond Human Needs: Consider desires and requirements beyond just human-centric design.
Inform Your Design Thinking: What’s guiding your decision-making processes?

🍃 Embrace slow design; even in fast-paced projects, identify opportunities to pause, reflect, and listen deeply.

🍃 Incorporate materiality—specifically biophilic design concepts—such as nature-based materials and living infrastructure. Think of the species as clients: consider the life cycle of local species and explore what can be integrated into your designs.

🍃 How do you create the space to write from the perspective of a species? What are its hopes, joys, and dreams? When working on design-specific projects, you serve as a crucial catalyst for systemic change. It often feels like there are elements beyond design that prompt reflection on what you can achieve.

In your design, you plant the seeds (both literally and figuratively) for people to connect and embrace biodiversity. Not every project can encompass all goals, but every conversation contributes to shared potential. Perhaps it won’t be immediate—maybe the change will emerge next time, or even in ten years—but that discussion may ultimately catalyse a biodiverse, nature-rich city.

Buildings Reloved

Considering intersections of place, culture, & carbon – The role of existing buildings in our sustainable future

Thursday 5 December 2024

So many good reasons to retrofit and adaptively resuse our existing buildings, but it remains the path less traveled in Australia. That was the message at the Atelier Ten Buildings Reloved event last night, hosted in partership with the Melbourne Regenerative Design Forum. Thanks to our insightful panel and speakers Brendon McNiven, Gavin Salt, Edward Bond, Kaia McCarty-Smith and Isabella Fyfe. Thanks also for the many people who came along, clearly energised by this topic of discussion and opportunities to reduce the roadblocks and change practice – thanks for your questions.

Some takeaways:

• This isn’t just about hashtag#carbon – The social value of retrofits and adaptive reuse projects can be significant and when we retain buildings we can enhance, rather than destroy the existing social fabric.
• What if we thought of buildings like a Kinder Surprise Egg? – Occupancies can change, as can the wrapping and interior fitouts, but the structure remains the same.
• Embodied energy will become the main game for carbon reductions, representing 85% of a building’s carbon emissions by 2050.
• We need to be careful about chasing energy efficiency at the expense of embodied carbon or we may increase the lifecycle carbon footprint.
• Given the increase in construction costs, reusing all or part of existing buildings has been demonstrated in Australia to save significant capital cost.
• Existing policy, regulations and insurance issues can be major impediments to adopting retrofits and adaptive reuse.
• The most successful projects involve a high degree of collaboration between building owner, architect, consultants, builder and investors.
• There is currently a significant skill and capability gap since retrofit and adaptive reuse projects require a different approach, a shift in design ethos and new technical knowledge.

Unlocking Nature’s Wisdom: Biomimicry and Regenerative Practice Workshop

Thursday 31 October 2024

We can all generate many creative and mind blowing ideas for designing regeneratively – we just need to “Ask Nature” for advice. Well done to Introba for hosting the Unlocking Nature’s Wisdom: Biomimicry and Regenerative Practice Workshop last night, another Melbourne Regenerative Design Forum event.

Thank you to Matthew Webb for unpacking this topic for us and sending us on our breakout group missions to apply the process.

Thanks also to David Barker and Dave Arnott for pulling together this event. We can look to biomimicry to help us with just about every topic in design.

While it’s not a new source of design inspiration, Velcro was an innovation based on the Burdock plant, it’s an increasingly important direction for regenerative design. Think innovation that avoids toxicity, uses less energy and resources, and contributes to system wide health. Biomimicry should be a core subject in every engineering and architectural course and part of on-going professional development training.

Ripples of Hope: A Walk for Jeff

Thursday 27 June 2024 

On a wintery late afternoon, a group of 45 gathered for a 3-hour walk through Melbourne, starting at the Melbourne School of Design and finishing at Docklands. Various projects led by Jeff Robinson were visited, with stories shared about their impact and the ripple effects created. Through interactive activities, participants were invited to reflect on these ripples and translate them into personal insights.

At each stop, participants:
- Learned stories about the sustainability features of various sustainable buildings.
- Discussed Jeff’s role in this or other projects in the area
- Engaged in a participatory activity that invited stories of working with Jeff, engaging with his vision, or facilitating sustainable outcomes in their own lives

To read participants' personal reflections from the day, visit Dr Domnique Hess' LinkedIn post here.

Jeff was well known in the industry, and beyond that, he played an important role in many lives: he was a regenerative leader.

MRDF hopes this event has encouraged reflection on the positive impact Jeff made in the industry and how everyone can work towards their own regenerative leadership.

Speakers included:
Peter Mathieson, Aurecon
Brendon McNiven, The University of Melbourne
Jessica Bennett, Aurecon
Chris Buntine, Atelier Ten
Adolfo Fernández Fernandez, Aurecon
Stephen Webb, Design Inc
Tiffany Crawford, City of Melbourne
Andrew Norbury, Metier3

Image copyright: Dominique Hess

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified building materials

May 1, 2024

What are they? Where can we get them? How can they be incorporated into building projects?

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