Regenerative Monument

Lisa provided me with articles about truly green design, regenerative design. This goes beyond the idea of sustaining our environment to actively working to improve it. Ben Haggard describes it as "...conceptualizes projects as engines of positive or evolutionary change for the systems into which they are build. Rather than looking at how to minimize the impact on wildlife habitat and corridors, for example, regenerative designs look at how to increase habitat quality." It is a more holistic design in terms of integrating the process of building with the economic health and stability of the local community.

He describes 4 concepts behind regenerative development

1. Flip your paradigm - view slopes, drainages, roads, buildings, etc not as things, but as energy systems.

2. Go to the Core - understanding the dynamics that create the character of place

3. Learn from the Master - learn from nature. it naturally develops the most efficient systems.
4. Build to Place, Not Formula - utilize the particulars of a place to determine appropriate engineering and design.

In his examples he describes site specific buildings which take advantage of their surroundings in places the at have been misused previously. Communities are active in the process from conception to completion, and learn how to apply these tactics in other areas of thier life and building. All exaples given are very rural, and i'm unsure of how this works in a more developed or urban context, if it works at all there. I'll see what i can find.

Anyway, the greatest and purest monuments are built to last, so they are within the realm of sustainability. Perhaps they all require a considerable amount of resources for their completion, but ask for little more once built. The building as monument requires a considerable amount of resources for completion, use, and maintenance with a much shorter life expectancy than grand monuments.

I'm start to think that what i'm going after is not sustainable monument, but regenerative monument. Sustainable in its methods of construction and materials, regenerative in its ability to add to the physical environment in terms of energy development, water usage, and add to the cultural environment in terms of education and expressing the impact of that which is memorialized and the effects of actions on the environment.