My guest today has been a big inspiration to me and has been a leader in regenerative design, pretty much before that was even a term. Bill Reed is an internationally recognized practitioner, lecturer, and authority in sustainability and regenerative planning, design and implementation. He is a principal in both Integrative Design, Inc. and Regenesis – two organizations working to lift green building and community planning into full integration and evolution with living systems. Bill is also the author of many technical articles and contributed to many books including the seminal work, “Integrative Design Guide to Green Building.” He is also a founding director of the US Green Building Council and one of the co-founders of the LEED Green Building Rating System. Bill has consulted on over two hundred green design commissions, the majority of which are LEED Gold and Platinum and Living Building Challenge projects.  He is also a keynote speaker at major building and design events as well as a guest lecturer to universities throughout Europe and North America including Harvard, MIT, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve been looking forward to connecting with Bill for quite some time and this interview did not disappoint. We talk at length about Bill’s design process and the perspective needed to remain open to the full scope and context that a design might affect. Bill warns of the dangers of going into a design job looking for problems to solve and projects to implement before understanding and listening to the place and the people in it. The insights from this interview were quite profound for me and I hope this will spark a larger conversation about what regenerative design is and has the power to do

Resources:

Regenesis Group website

Guide to LEED building certification

US Green Building Council