Prof Chrisna du Plessis, Head of the Department of Architecture in the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology, delivered her inaugural address on 29 August 2023. The topic of her presentation was “Regenerating a collapsing world: Effecting transformation through head, heart and hands”.

Prof Du Plessis’ research focuses on developing the principles and guiding frameworks for the practices of urban sustainability and human settlement development. at both the theoretical and technical levels. She is known internationally for her work on the evaluation of policy and research strategy for sustainable building and construction within developing countries, as well as developing the field of regenerative design and development.

According to Prof Du Plessis, the global polycrisis that was created by the interplays among global socio-political instability, increasing inequality, accelerating climate change, ecosystem loss and pervasive pollution by the residues of the second and third industrial revolutions, and the lifestyles they enable, is creating an unfamiliar and essentially unknowable world in which the cities of our future will have to function.

Nonetheless, crisis and collapse also bring opportunities for renewal as the cracks in old, dysfunctional systems provide fertile ground for the seeds of systems transformation to take root. However, creating an abundant and thriving future in which all members of the community of life can flourish requires a radical change in how we see the place and role of humans in the future development of the global socio-ecological system.

In her address, she mapped the evolution of sustainability thinking and how this evolution results from a shift in the worldview, providing new values and purpose. She discussed how a regenerative approach changes the processes and products of built environment design by integrating pathways laid out by the head (knowledge systems and reflection), the heart (values and attitudes) and the hand (praxis).

While we know that our choices shape the world, we need to establish how we got to this point, and what needs to change for us to remedy the faults in the world as we know it to create a better world for future generations. She explains that our beliefs about the world are shaped by our particular worldview. Over the past 500 years, Western society has been dominated by a worldview that separates humans from nature, ignoring the limits to growth posed by a finite and interconnected planet.  

Sustainability thinking, on the other hand, holds that humans should protect nature and improve human wellbeing by developing technologies that decouple human development from environmental impacts. This is aligned to the goal of sustainable development, which aims to create a civilization in which basic human needs can be met within the ecological limits of the planet. She believes that urban sustainability can best be achieved by adopting an ecological worldview, which sees the world as a system of interconnected and interdependent living systems. This includes humans and their socio-techno systems.

Essential to this worldview is the conviction that humans can play a positive role in the development, regeneration and evolution of the global socio-ecological system. By creating regenerating systems, humans can be a force for good. This happens when our relationship with nature becomes one of collaboration, partnership and co-evolution.

But how do we fix what is wrong with the world? Prof Du Plessis is convinced that new ways of thinking will lead to new ways of doing. By adopting an ecological model for sustainability, we can regenerate the biophysical environment, as well as society. And by cooperating with nature and within communities, we can transition to a more sustainable model of human development in which humans can establish a symbiotic relationship with their social and biophysical environment.

Building forth on this ecological model for sustainability, Prof Du Plessis developed a revised evolutionary trajectory of ecologically responsible design. She explains that, working from an ecological worldview that is focused on growing positive impact, we can develop practices and environments that integrate natural and socio-techno systems, and can work with nature to create an abundant world. Such a worldview is regenerative and restorative, dynamic, resilient and adaptive, and recreates natural and social environments. It sees the city as a collection of processes, and not a collection of objects.  

However, regenerative work requires a new kind of practitioner: someone who is self-aware, and who can work creatively with ambiguity and uncertainty. This would enable them to welcome the complexity of natural systems, and the diversity of perspectives that characterises living communities. As a co-creative and collaborative process, regenerative practice is also an exercise in non-attachment; being able to look beyond preconceived ideas to see what should be developed for the benefit of both the people and the planet.

Finally, how does one go about creating a better world? Prof Du Plessis believes that if we can acknowledge that humans are part of nature, it follows that we should honour the laws of nature, cooperate with nature and learn from nature.

As a future research endeavour, she proposes exploring the possibility of a potential Sixth Industrial Revolution, rooted in concepts such as biomimicry, bio-fabrication and circularity, which can regenerate the planet and transform our societies to create a radically different, life-affirming future in which all our descendants will not only survive, but also thrive.