Regenerative Design

Regenerative Design is a strategic-creative approach that aims to transform systems — organizations, communities, territories — toward logics that regenerate the conditions sustaining life and progress, rather than degrading them. Unlike product-centred design, or even sustainable design (which aims at “doing less harm”), Regenerative Design starts from place, understands its patterns, and designs with its actors toward a desirable future.

In this article I share how to apply it, with two real cases: the PDT-Nariño (a development cooperation project in Colombia) and CDTM Valencia.

We hear a lot about the “poly-crisis”: that perfect storm we are living through, where the economic, technological, ecological, social and geopolitical converge to give us chaos, uncertainty, and the occasional fright.

In the middle of this whirlwind, we are called to talk about Regenerative Design. Like Sustainability, some might assume that this thing about Regeneration is about making flowers grow. Sure, that may be part of it. But we cannot focus only on the environmental question. At a socio-economic, cultural — even, why not, personal — level, we also have this need to adapt, improve our systems, and avoid those frights as much as possible.

Avoid those degenerative logics — vicious cycles — that drag us toward poorer conditions: weaker purchasing power, talent flight, chronic fatigue, social fragmentation, scarcity of natural resources, loss of the biodiversity that nourishes and shelters us, loss of trust in institutions… or whatever else comes to mind. By contrast, the regenerative logic is about making the conditions that sustain our lives and our progress flourish.

Creative Regeneration — this space that seeks to connect thought and action — is called that because, to move our organizations, our communities, our territories toward regenerative logics, we have no choice but to use creativity. Design. But, in the same way, for the creative-strategic practice of Design to truly serve us, it must itself regenerate. Rethink itself.

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Where are we (and where could we get to)?

Short answer: We start by understanding the place — territory, organization, system — through its actors, its resources, its forces and… its possible futures.

There is a key notion in Regenerative Design: “Designing from Place”. Situated design. From our territory. Our organization. Our body.

When Mang and Reed (2012) gave shape to this concept, they were probably thinking of “place” as a physical location. Your town, your city, or your region. But here is what I’d propose: in a globalized, hyperconnected, digitalized world, we should extend the notion of “place” beyond a single physical space. That “place” could be your company, and perhaps in your company people are working connected from many parts of the world. We should be able to articulate the most functional definition of “place” for each case.

I remember when I was working on the PDT-Nariño, the definition of “place” had a sharp territorial dimension. That was the starting point: we worked in a specific region, one of those most affected by the armed conflict in Colombia.

However, working at CDTM – Center for Digital Technology and Management, this approach is not enough. The territorial dimension does not disappear: at CDTM Valencia we work with public administrations and Valencian companies, and the students come from the two public universities in Valencia. And there is CDTM Munich, which gives this territorial dimension a European reach. But the “place” is not only physical: CDTM’s global community is spread across the world and binds to the Center, as a place, in a way that transcends territory.

In any case, defining the place we inhabit lets us understand:

• Who the actors are (or stakeholders, which I find more precise) — people, organizations — and the relationships that shape it.
• What resources are available — not only natural; also time, money, capabilities.
• What forces — political, technological, cultural — pull and push at those who inhabit the place.

Beyond that, understanding the place and articulating a vision for its future can only be done hand-in-hand with its actors: people, collectives, departments, companies, institutions that shape it day to day.

The missing dimension: the future

There is a dimension that traditional Regenerative Design literature rarely incorporates, and that is the future dimension. Foresight and Futures Design are vital components in any process of change and adaptation. It is not only what we have been and what we have become, but… what could we become? What trajectories might we yet see in our environment?

Bringing this perspective into the story of place is, to my mind, the next frontier for Regenerative Design.

Where do we want to go (and how)?

Short answer: We identify the purpose — the preferable future — and align strategies and interventions with what the place already is and with what it wants to be.

Mang and Reed (2012) also spoke of the “Vocation of Place”. That potential which the place — the territory, the community, the organization — can develop.

Having established that understanding the place must include this foresight and exploration of future scenarios, my argument is that the “Vocation of Place” amounts to that preferable future, that vision (and “mission”, and “values”?) we aim at with whatever we design. With our strategy.

From there, knowing the patterns of place and having built a shared understanding of it, we can practice “Designing for Harmony”. Aligning all our strategies and interventions with what the place already is, and with what it wants to be. And aligning the different stakeholders around their needs and aspirations.

Designing post-conflict opportunities

PDT-Nariño exemplified this idea of designing for harmony. It built a shared vision and narrative with the actors of the territory (not for them, but with them). About what a region in Peace could become.

“This is a project that dialogued with the territory and its actors. It engaged with political agendas, sought to understand the development plans and bets in play, and then complemented them with the lines of the PDT.” — Gloria Pérez, project coordinator since 2019.

It started from processes already in motion. Are there cocoa and coconut crops, or emerging community-tourism initiatives, that offer economic alternatives to illicit crops? Then we design business models that can root and grow in the territory, alongside them. Are there activists already working for the political participation of women? We work with them.

“If you want transformative results, it is very hard to start from things that are at ‘zero’. You have to look for processes already in motion.” — Gloria Pérez.

Redesigning a European institution around education and innovation

The management team at CDTM Munich, years ago, had developed a collective process with its whole community (students, alumni) that led to defining the vision of becoming a “European network of Centers”. That statement opened the design of strategies, explorations and negotiations that resulted, in 2023, in the first step toward that vision: the first new CDTM location, Valencia.

Now, in 2026, at CDTM Valencia we are rethinking the operating model and value proposition of the Center, together with the current community, with the intention of regenerating the engagement of the community itself and the conditions that will make the program sustainable in the future.

How do we sustain and evolve our place?

Short answer: By instituting regenerative patterns in the place — communication, pedagogy, culture — that keep working once you are no longer there.

Finally, Mang and Reed (2012) speak of “Designing for Co-evolution”. That is: self-sustaining and continuing to adapt as a system, so it does not slip back into degenerative logics. For me, this has a lot to do with instituting in the place a set of regenerative patterns. Leaving a legacy, an installed capability, that keeps working once you leave.

Communication and marketing as vehicles of regeneration

Part of this can have a lot to do with communication — even with marketing. Not necessarily to sell a product (though sometimes that too), but to connect with the new actors who will keep the system evolving.

In the case of PDT-Nariño, flyers, fairs and events served to attract people, companies and institutions to the territory — actors who would give continuity to the processes built, to the business models implemented, to the new logics rooted in a culture of peace.

In the case of CDTM, it has more to do with transmitting the community’s culture of innovation, ambition and respect to the new generations who will become part of the Center.

Pedagogy: installed capability

The other part has to do with communication in a different sense: that of pedagogy. Training and equipping the system’s actors so they can keep replicating the conditions that make their activity possible.

PDT-Nariño developed in the territory a wealth of training and awareness activities. We even designed booklets and educational books that consolidated learning in tangible form. When the project ended, the territorial actors who had been accompanied needed to be able to continue without further accompaniment.

CDTM leaves, in both alumni and management team, a set of capabilities for continuing to iterate on the program and the community — adapting to change, and growing.

How to start applying Regenerative Design

Creative Regeneration, as a community and as a methodological framework, is a work in progress. We recently published what could be a first founding manifesto for Creative Regeneration. It will not surprise you, at this point, that the phases of our proposed methodological framework — Explore – Activate – Impulse — parallel the phases of Regenerative Design I have just walked through.

How do we sustain and evolve what we have built?

Working under Creative Commons, in open knowledge, the idea is that any practitioner or organization can use, adapt, and improve the frameworks we work with.

We are not simply generating an analytical framework for academics, nor an expert consultancy service — although, well, it serves those purposes too. Rather, we are building a framework for collective practice, proposed to give us the capacity to participate in the transformation of our world.

⚪ And you — how do you regenerate the conditions that make your own life, your own work, possible?

Let us know your thoughts!

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A new world is continuously taking shape, placing inspiring horizons before us alongside complex challenges. In this in-between space, between what is and what could be, Creative Regeneration is a community of practice and research that seeks to bring what is yet to come to life.

P.S. — If you are already working with any of these frameworks in your organization, write to me. I am gathering cases for the next iteration of the methodology, and your experience can help more people apply it. If you use tools from the methodology in any project at all, the same applies: your contribution is enormously useful for generating new knowledge in a more effective and collective way.

References

• Sáez Martínez, P., Sáiz, B., & González Del Río, J. (2026). Creative Regeneration: First Approach and Testing of a Comprehensive Methodology for Designing the Transition to Sustainability. The International Journal of Designed Objects.
• Mang, P., & Reed, B. (2012). Designing from place: A regenerative framework and methodology. Building Research & Information, 40(1), 23–38.