How we design and live in a regenerative world

Daniel Christian Wahl’s book Designing Regenerative Cultures explains how the way we choose to live can help solve some of the world’s biggest existential challenges. A core text in many university programmes, Wahl’s book explores how subjects including quantum theory, biomimicry, systems theory and the circular economy can intertwine to make life on this planet symbiotic with nature.

“The western mind likes to think in terms of the Kantian dialectic of thesis, antithesis,” Wahl tells me. “Like, to bring in something new, it has to be the opposite of the old. It’s a bit like the paradigm shift and so on. It sets us up tragically when we bring in something new to not learn from the past, and throw the baby out with the bath water.”

He adds: “We need to re-envision how we collaborate and how we relate to each other and the natural world. Once we understand that life is a planetary process, that we’re not individuals, that there are more non-human cells in us and on us than human cells, that we are literally walking ecosystems, that life and even matter shows up in relationship and through participation of consciousness, it just fundamentally shifts the nature of reality.”

His ideas are hitting home with a growing reGeneration of global citizens – and the impact Wahl, winner of the 2021 RSA Bicentenary Medal for applying design in service to society, is making is now widely seen as defining in the field of regenerative design.