Regenerative Housing. A Co-creative Toolkit Linking Construction, Climate, and Materials

The training session will address the global housing challenge by proposing regenerative, more-than-sustainable solutions for construction that turn buildings into carbon sinks. The building sector remains one of the largest contributors to global warming with significant harm being done through emission-intensive supply chains and materials. However, when using nature-based materials such as timber, bamboo, earth, hemp, straw, etc., CO2 is stored in buildings long-term, which contributes to climate change mitigation. This session focuses on the long-neglected embodied carbon (manufacturing, transportation, installation, and reuse/recycling of materials). Participants will first learn about the new paradigm of regenerative construction focusing on nature-based value chains and local building practices. A series of place-based real-world examples from Cape Town (South Africa), Bali (Indonesia), Thimphu-Paro (Bhutan), and Berlin (Germany) will be presented and discussed, including policy-targeted roadmaps for a regenerative future. The central learning of this session will be the practical application of a hands-on co-creation tool – a step-by-step process to 1) analyse current building practices in a local context and 2) to envision a transformation scenario towards nature-based alternatives, including opportunities and barriers. Participants will work in three groups and collaboratively analyse urban housing archetypes from three global regions: Asia, Europe, and Latin America. The aim is to discuss four typical components of a building (roof, columns and beams, exterior walls, and ceilings) comparatively – in a first step focusing on the conventional status quo, and in a second step on a nature-based vision. Guided by moderators, participants will discuss current and future supply chains, their constraints and potentials, as well as suggestions for a number of locally relevant building materials. Overall, in this interactive session, participants will learn about the nexus between construction, climate, and materials, as well as engage with a hands-on tool that is part of a methodology for transforming local construction economies towards regenerativity. This participatory experience will equip participants with state-of-the-art knowledge on regenerative construction, provide access to relevant tools and methods, and explore future construction practices in different world regions.