Regenerative Design Framework: How We Establish and Track Metrics

Smarter Planning for a Better Future

Regenerative design moves beyond basic high-performance goals towards net-positive impacts with metric-driven targets which consider the project in its broader context.

Our framework creates a way to visualize and measure the key performance indicators that a project team sets for a project, existing benchmarks, and what modeling indicates as the level of performance that should be achieved when the project opens in the future. These KPIs are organized into our seven regenerative categories to provide a holistic view of metrics at the center of every design.

The following are examples of projects that embody our seven regenerative categories.

Air: Quality

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Welcome Center is an all-electric facility and houses the campus central cafeteria, health services department, human resources department, badging office, and a 250-seat conference center. Electrification of the project, coupled with “low energy” food choices in the cafeteria, decreases the amount of combustion on site and reduces particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde exhausted to the campus.

Carbon: Embodied

For the Orange County Sanitation District Administrative Headquarters, it was determined that a regenerative range of embodied carbon emissions would be a 105% reduction of kg of CO2 per unit of area to provide a net positive carbon equation. The project was able to achieve a 180% reduction in embodied carbon — approximately 1,140 metric tons. This was achieved through reduction of interior finishes, use of renewable materials, and mass timber construction which, over its lifetime, sequestered 360 metric tons to help balance the carbon equation.

Water: Infiltration

At the Bethany Creek Stormwater Implementation project, hydrologic and hydraulic modeling determined that a regenerative peak runoff rate would be 1.6 cfs for a 1.3-year storm. Code required only that the post-development peak discharge be less than the pre-development peak for the 25-year storm. Creative strategies like analog beaver dams, berms, off-channel wetlands, engineered soil and native vegetation matched the ecological baseline for erosion inducing flows, recharged groundwater tables, enabled evapotranspiration, improved water quality and re-established historic wetland ecology.

Nutrients: Soil Building

Atlanta’s historic Fourth Ward was subject to intermittent flooding and sewer overflows during storms. The design of the new park transforms a nearby blighted industrial lowland into urban greenspace with green infrastructure to address social inequities and regenerate natural ecosystems. The five-acre development includes soil amendments and plantings which improve stormwater performance, increase carbon sequestration by 6.3 tons annually, cycle nutrients appropriately, and provides the community with a 56% increase in property value.

Biodiversity: Habitat

An ambitious 100% regenerative range of habitat creation or restoration was determined for the Hamilton Center Development site given the Society for Ecological Restoration and Living Building Challenge Ecology of Place Imperative. This target would meet the same air, carbon, water, nutrient and biodiversity performance metrics as a Transect T1 Natural Zone. The project was able to achieve a 75% restoration target through the restoration of wetlands, grasslands and species migration zones.

Human Health: Indoor Environment

For the 428 Minneapolis project, regenerative health benchmarks were established as bleeding edge indoor environment metrics from the LEED and WELL rating systems with emphasis on views to nature and biophilic elements. The project achieved the views target of 50% without interior biophilic elements and 79% when biophilic elements were added throughout the workplace. While it fell short of the regenerative range, it is a good example of a design that uses the 14 biophilic principles.

Community: Social Justice

HDR’s social equity toolkit lays out steps project teams can take to support regeneration of community fabric. These steps include (1) discovery and definition; (2) stakeholder engagement and data analysis; (3) burden / benefit analysis; (4) advancing opportunity and minimizing harm; (5) evaluation and accountability; (6) assessment and reporting. For the East Vancouver Integrated Health and Social Housing project, we engaged local community leaders and First Nations to help address specific issues related to homelessness, drug addiction and rehabilitation, and job training. The team executed four of the six steps in the social equity toolkit.