Abstract
Transitions towards sustainability involving technological, social, behavioural, institutional, and organisational change are urgently needed to address the complex environmental and societal challenges. While the built environment has a considerable environmental and social impact, design scope for sustainable architecture has been primarily limited to reducing the environmental impacts of individual buildings. To achieve net-positive natural and social outcomes for the built environment there is a need for more systemic approaches and design methodology that allows to reframe the task of design from solving isolated problems to contributing to system transformation. The article reviews transformational, systems-oriented process models and associated tools developed in the fields of regenerative design, systemic design and sustainability transitions, with the aim to define a methodological framework for sustainability transitions relevant for the built environment. A case study from a practice-led research is used to illustrate and discuss how such a process could be integrated in architectural practice.
Keywords
built environment; sustainability transitions; systemic design; regenerative design; design methodology; architectural practice
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1114
Citation
Plavina, A., Kleiven, T., and Nilstad Pettersen, I. (2024) Developing a Methodological Framework for Sustainability Transitions in the Built Environment, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1114
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Developing a Methodological Framework for Sustainability Transitions in the Built Environment
Transitions towards sustainability involving technological, social, behavioural, institutional, and organisational change are urgently needed to address the complex environmental and societal challenges. While the built environment has a considerable environmental and social impact, design scope for sustainable architecture has been primarily limited to reducing the environmental impacts of individual buildings. To achieve net-positive natural and social outcomes for the built environment there is a need for more systemic approaches and design methodology that allows to reframe the task of design from solving isolated problems to contributing to system transformation. The article reviews transformational, systems-oriented process models and associated tools developed in the fields of regenerative design, systemic design and sustainability transitions, with the aim to define a methodological framework for sustainability transitions relevant for the built environment. A case study from a practice-led research is used to illustrate and discuss how such a process could be integrated in architectural practice.