The Importance of Technical and Cultural Possibilism in Design

“The idea of being a possibilist is that you decide on the future you want, and then you collaborate and work on actually bringing that future about. So you see, the future is something that can be shaped.”

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“Many of these issues are broader, systemic, structural issues that will not be changed by one person acting alone, but rather, they will be changed by many people understanding that they need to take responsibility by acting together to intervene.”

 

For this episode, co-hosts Michael Pawlyn and Sarah Ichioka dive into some of the conversations they’ve had on other podcasts where they have been invited to discuss Flourish and regenerative thinking and practice.

 

Show notes

Sarah and Michael’s book, Flourish: Design Paradigms For Our Planetary Emergency is now available as an audio edition narrated by voice artist Nicola Burgess. You can find it on Audible, Apple Books & Amazon.

Michael leads London-based Exploration Architecture. He is currently undertaking an ambitious renovation to his family home and collaborating with HaworthTompkins to design The Tendring and Colchester Borders Garden Community, a new regenerative development in the UK.

Sarah leads Singapore-based Desire Lines. She was recently a Designing Cities for All RE-generation Fellow with Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. She is also an advisor to the Klosters Forum 2023.

Regeneration Rising is a specially-commissioned RSA podcast hosted by Josie Warden and Daniel Christian Wahl that explores regenerative development, sustainability, and systems thinking. The podcast explores the ways in which we can create regenerative, thriving communities that prioritize ecological sustainability and social well-being.

Architectures of Planetary Well Being is Re:Arc Institute’s audio sense-making space hosted by environmental journalist Yessenia Funes that explores the interconnection of our social and ecological systems. Each season features climate visionaries in shaping a series of conversations that bring together a variety of lived experiences with the hopes of helping us explore the threads between architecture, design, and environmental activism. Michael’s “radical uncle”was called John Millen. If you’re curious, you can read more about  Sarah’s “radical uncle” and aunt. 

Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts -The Book of Revelations is a podcast hosted by comedian Jon Richardson and futurists Ed Gillespie and Mark Stevenson. The podcast explores the big questions facing humanity and the planet, with a focus on the role that technology and innovation will play in shaping the future. Each episode of the podcast covers a specific topic, such as climate change, artificial intelligence, or space exploration.

Accidental Gods is a podcast hosted by a former Scottish veterinary surgeon who is now a novelist, blogger, columnist and occasional broadcaster, Manda Scott,  that explores the intersection of spirituality, ecology, and activism. The podcast is focused on answering the question of how we can create a sustainable future for ourselves and the planet.

Uncanny Landscapes is a podcast hosted by writer and artist Justin Hopper. The podcast explores the connections between landscape, folklore, and the human psyche.

Pakhuis de Zwijger is a cultural center and event space located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Annick Van Rinsum hosts a podcast series for Pakhuis de Zwijger called "Pakhuis de Toekomst" (Warehouse of the Future). The podcast explores various aspects of sustainability and innovation and features interviews with experts in fields such as renewable energy, circular economy, and sustainable mobility. The podcast aims to inspire listeners to think creatively and critically about the challenges and opportunities facing society as we strive to build a more sustainable future. 

Green Urbanist hosted by Ross O'Ceallaigh, a planner and urban designer based in London, this show explores how architects, planners, policy makers and designers can make cities more sustainable, healthy and happy.

Cities in Mind is a podcast hosted by Fabien Clavier, an urban planner and consultant. The podcast explores the ways in which cities shape our lives, and the challenges and opportunities of urban living. It is a valuable resource for anyone interested in urban planning, architecture, and the ways in which our cities shape our lives. The podcast offers insights and ideas for how we can create more livable, sustainable, and inclusive cities in the future.

Endless Vital Activity is a podcast hosted by David Johnston, who is an entrepreneur, investor, and speaker in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. The podcast explores the potential of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to transform society and the global economy. He also explores the social and economic implications of these technologies, and their potential to foster innovation, decentralization, and financial inclusion.

Other podcasts that Sarah and Michael have recently appeared on include:

Michael spoke with WGSN and ESG Matters.

Sarah spoke with In Line With Nature and Climify (the episode with Sarah is due out 24 May–we’ll update the link then).

 

Transcript

Episode 9: Special Episode (Podcast Roundup) - 41 minutes

Michael Pawlyn

Well, it’s been quite awhile since we last released an episode of Flourish Systems Change, but we’re back for a one-off special episode!

Sarah Ichioka

Yes we are! How are you feeling Michael and what have you been up to since we last recorded?

Michael Pawlyn

Good. I’ve been getting my hands dirty renovating my family’s flat and also an exciting new collaboration with architects Haworth Tompkins on a huge project in the UK and we won the pitch by pushing the regenerative agenda. When you write a book you can never be too sure what effect it will have and it was really flattering that the client for this project introduced the first project meeting by reading a long passage from Flourish.  How about you Sarah?

Sarah Ichioka

I’m good thanks. In the period since we last spoke it’s  been really satisfying to see a number of our projects with Desire Lines come to fruition. Also to be able to contribute to the conversation about regeneration as it picks up pace, whether that’s been on the ground here in Singapore, or in Switzerland, where I’m involved with the Klosters Forum or in the Netherlands, where I recently finished a fellowship with Pakhuis de Zwijger as part of their Designing Cities for All initiative.

Michael Pawlyn

That sounds great. So alongside these other developments in our lives, we’ve recently launched an audiobook version of ‘Flourish’, which we’ll link to in the shownotes. And we’ve been invited to speak about “Flourish” with a number of podcasters–both individually and jointly.

Sarah Ichioka

Yes, that’s been wonderful. Especially since one of our key hopes for our book and this podcast was that we would help to kickstart a robust debate about how we define and practice regenerative design and development. 

Michael Pawlyn

So let’s dive into some of these conversations and what we learned from them. It’s been exciting to engage with some other podcasts that are also focused on regenerative thinking and practice.

Sarah Ichioka

Yes, and there seems to be so many of them popping up in the last year, for example the ReGeneration Rising series produced by the RSA. In this podcast co-hosts Josie Warden and Daniel Christian Wahl explore “how regenerative approaches can help us collectively redesign our communities, cities, and economies, and create a thriving home for all on our planet.”

[Audio excerpt from Regeneration Rising] 

Daniel Wahl

The most advanced work in regenerative urban redevelopment is not necessarily coming from architectural or planning professionals. But for example, through processes like the Thriving Places program that the Donut Economics Action Lab has started. And that brings me to this question in general, that I think we're dancing around scale here a lot. With regard to what scale can we actually affect this transformation in a way that is really adapted to place.

Sarah Ichioka

I'm so glad you framed it that way, Daniel, because I think it's particularly timely given that we're recording this now, at a time when, you know, many governments around the world have decided the pandemic is over. But we still very much have the mindset of the pandemic with us. And I think that it's been notable and many, many others have observed this, that there's been a real relocalization of awareness. And I think a resulting move towards a real appreciation of that localized scale, you know, whether it's from supply chains through to the 15 Minute city, suddenly there is that contraction, which can be positive and negative. But I think it opens up this real potential to rethink how we can embed or really re embed our human systems within the parameters of their local natural systems.

Michael Pawlyn

We also talk in the book about the importance of starting at a sort of planetary level with an understanding of Gaia theory based on Lynn Margulis’s and James Lovelock's work. And given that, ultimately, what we've got to do is integrate everything we do as humans into the broader web of life, there's so much that we can learn from the way that life has evolved. And starting from that, that planetary level and working back from that, that that gives us some very useful clues, for instance, on what materials we should be using, first of all, so we refer to Janine Benyus, her work and the way she talks about how nature builds from a very limited and safe subset of the periodic table. And then we can learn further lessons about how to put those materials together in ways that facilitate that, the long term stewardship of materials in cyclical systems. And then, also, we talk about the importance of a really key question for all designers when approaching a new project is to ask themselves, what solutions already exist in this place. And we're referring to solutions that have evolved through the ingenuity of humans as well as the adaptations that exist in biology, and ideally, looking at those in non binary terms. So looking at them all as evolved ingenuity.

Sarah Ichioka

And I think, Daniel, you know, there's this concurrent possibility now, for us to not only, you know, completely reimagine systems as fully embedded within the web of life that sustain us, but also, to think about how that breaks down, say, colonial ways of thinking, right? Because so often, this idea of conquest of nature was wedded to an idea of subjugation of specific other categories of humans. And you can see that with, you know, the imposition of arbitrary national boundaries, for example. And that's the sort of same mindset that informs that sort of intervention that we're now dealing with trying to repair the legacy of, is also the same sort of mindset that would drive one to build a massive dam that then completely destroys, you know, a watershed that's existed for for up to 10s of 1000s of years. So I think there's a really interesting opportunity here, and I, you know, I'd love to hear examples from you, Daniel, and Josie as well, where you see this possibility for rethinking in our relationship with nature at also rethink our relationship with one another and what sort of systems we need to create to make that new inter relationship app possible.

Daniel Wahl

Well, this is exactly why I asked the question about place and scale after you mentioned that we're stuck in a degenerative economic system that has been blinded by the opportunities of globalization to the point that we made a way made redundant local resilience infrastructure in every country in the world, and created these brutal supply lines that you also mentioned earlier. And so for me this reintegration of humanity back into life's regenerative patterns is all about understanding how do we dwell in a place as expressions of that place and the regional watershed by regional approach is a is a real biophysical boundary that was shaped by the by the geophysical and biological ecological patterns over eons. And to fit humanity back into life's regenerative patterns is also to fit our processes of meeting our needs, back to the right scale. And I also seem, seem to concur with you that the boundaries of countries that we are used to associate political boundaries of the era of power over of empire of colonialism and why they also now created history and culture over the long run in order to make this refitting into life's patterns happen, we we probably will find that regions become more important city regions and regions in general, then the national boundaries.

Sarah Ichioka

Absolutely. And actually, in terms of reasons for looking for areas for hope, or optimism, which we all need right now, I think I am really struck by the recent reporting by advocacy groups, about the scale of our landmass that is still stewarded by indigenous and local traditional, very place based communities. At minimum, it's 20%. Right? Some numbers put that at over 30%. So just think, you know, if even a fraction of our corporations and our elected representatives decided to, you know, to turn away from that extractivist, colonialist mindset, then there could be this amazing potential to return a much larger percentage of landmass to that, to that custodianship and stewardship model, which, in a way, runs countered as a net to many of our more modern ideas of conservation, which again, right, reflect, reflect that point, that we've referenced already about seeing human culture as separate from natural systems, right? We conserve the thing that's over there. I think Michael, and I see huge potential to instead think about how is nature something that we engage with.

Josie Warden

It's really interesting hearing you speak about this, because I think that relational aspect is something that's really been missing from the sustainability discussion to some extent, especially when it comes to design and the built environment. And I wonder, Michael, if you could talk a little bit about what it means to really connect back to nature? What are some of nature's ways of working that we are part of, but perhaps we've forgotten? And how can we use these to adopt a more regenerative design approach?

Michael Pawlyn

There's a particular idea that we draw on from an environmental philosopher called Freya Matthews. And she describes this idea, which she refers to as conativity. And that's the impulse for all living beings and living systems to maintain and increase their own existence and to do so in a way that actually enhances the system as a whole. And since the rise of agrarian societies, the tendency has been to not engage with broader living systems. And what we're proposing is that there is much to be learned from applying this principle to designing the built environment, asking ourselves how can we inhabit places in a way that engages with the connectivity of the whole system, or to use more straightforward terms? How might we design the built environment so that we have a net positive impact, and we get to the point where we are actually co evolving as nature.

[Excerpt ends]

Sarah Ichioka

On a superficial level, I think we both felt in awe that we would be included amongst some of the other guests who we consider giants such as Kate Raworth, John Elkington and Tyson Yunkaporta. From an ecosystem building perspective, it’s been great to deepen our relationship with the RSA because they hosted our first public talk together back in 2011, and also our book launch for “Flourish” and they are doing such good work around Regeneration.

Michael Pawlyn

Indeed they’ve got a whole programme around regenerative cultures.

Daniel's book ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ remains one of the most important and he was well ahead of the field with his early emphasis on ideas like Planetary Health. So we also appeared jointly on a new series from the re:arc institute. In their own words “re:arc institute is an emergent philanthropic initiative committed to supporting the architecture(s) of planetary well-being. We understand the urgency of this moment as a call to action to reframe the ways in which we relate to the planet, and to move us beyond extractive paradigms. As a fund we are interested in building lines of inquiry, discourse, and action that seek to explore and experiment with the notion of architecture and design as a lens through which we come to understand the interconnection of our social and ecological systems.” For this episode we spoke with guest host, Yessenia Funes who is a New York-based environmental journalist, a writer, a creative, and a thought leader. And I felt we actually learnt more about each other’s backgrounds and how we had similar upbringings, Sarah and I that is. 

[Audio excerpt from Re:Arc’s Architectures of Planetary Well-Being]

Yessenia Funes

I was hoping to kick things off by maybe starting from the beginning and hearing a little bit about the origins of the work that you two do. You know, where did y’all grow up? How did that affect who you are, your experiences and your practice? Perhaps we can start with Sarah?

Sarah Ichioka

Sure. So I am a child of the San Francisco Bay Area. I was born in Oakland and raised between Oakland and Berkeley, California. And I am sure that that shaped me in many ways. The public school system in that part of the world, in particular at the Berkeley Public School System, has been ahead of the curve in terms of including diverse voices and its curriculum in diverse perspectives for many, many years. I mean, my high school was the first public high school in the United States to have an African American Studies Department back in 1969. And I think that, you know, it's by no means a multicultural paradise. But I think that growing up in that context has definitely shaped the way that I'm always trying to think what voices might be missing from a conversation and what role I can play to bring diverse voices together in conversation, And also–really quickly–I grew up in a family of readers, we didn't have a television. So I think that's really biased me towards books and writing and maybe given the optimism, to want to dive in and co author this book with Michael. And I also grew up with a lot of time out in the open air. And I think that so much of what we want to talk about today is about how we can all reintegrate with the rest of the natural world, and I'm sure that some of my seminal childhood experiences would have shaped that

Yessenia Funes

Wow, growing up without a TV is something. My weekends are spent in front of the TV for hours. So that sounds quite lovely. Michael, really excited to hear about your upbringing, especially as someone who is not from the US as Sarah and I are, and that experience and how that has shaped you as well.

Michael Pawlyn

Well, thanks. And interestingly, I grew up largely without television as well, because my parents moved around quite a lot. And a really formative experience for me was around age 11, when my parents moved to Qatar, and I went snorkeling in coral reefs for the first time, and I was just captivated by this otherworldly beauty of marine life and that definitely made a profound impression on me. And I think it was part of what made me love biology as a subject. And then another important influence was that I had quite a kind of radical uncle, actually, he was a real polymath. And he gave me a book called Blueprint for Survival when I was about age 13. And I think that that politicized me about political issues at quite an early age. And so there were these three strands, there was the environmental politics, there was the love of nature, and then I was also really into making things. And I thought about studying biology at university, but I couldn't see the creative side of it. So I went off to study architecture. And it was really, some years later, when I was age 30, when I joined Grimshaw, to work on the early stages of the Eden Project, that I realized that there was a way to bring those three strands of biology, design and the environment together.

[Excerpt ends]

Michael Pawlyn

It was amusing to see that we both had a radical uncle that had been quite influential on us. So anyway, given the volume of invitations across different time zones, we decided to share the time between us and engage in some individual conversation. 

Michael Pawlyn

And on ‘Jon Richardson and the futurenauts’ which is presented by comedian Jon R with Ed Gillespie and Mark Stevenson they follow a format of asking guests how much trouble we’re in as a society, how did we get into this mess and how do we get out of it. I gave my view on the first part of this by talking about some ideas from one of our key sources Roman Krznaric:

[Audio Excerpt from Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts]

Michael Pawlyn

I'm actually haunted by this illustration that was in Roman Krznaric's book, The Good Ancestor, where he shows three pathways for civilization. There's the breakdown pathway, which is pretty obvious. And then there's the transformation pathway, which is obviously the one we want to get onto. But the really worrying one is the reform pathway, because that's the pathway in which governments and business leaders do just enough to persuade enough people that they're taking realistic action, when in reality, that action is nowhere near enough. And all it does is defer the point of collapse. And that is so clearly the one we're on. And I think one of the really worrying things about the moment, the present moment is that there are a lot of powerful players who want you to believe that it'll be enough to get to net zero and we don't really need to change anything particularly fundamental about the system. And want to give you a sense of, you know, how messed up the system is, the Cambridge academic Julian Allwood reviews, the UK government's plans for Net Zero concluded that they have as much chance of working as magic beans fertilized with unicorns’ blood.

Mark Stevenson

Wow, it doesn't sound like yeah, academic speak, that isn’t proper academic really [unintelligible]

Michael Pawlyn

Lots of metrics. You know, it's robust.

[Excerpt ends]

Sarah Ichioka

Then I spoke with Manda Scott for her Accidental Gods podcast. Manda is a polymath–she trained as a veterinary surgeon, but she’s probably best known to audiences as the author of bestselling thrillers and historical novels. She also teaches shamanic dreaming and creative writing amongst many, many other things. And she’s also a smallholder to conversations about social and cultural change, as you’ll hear here:

[Audio excerpt from Accidental Gods]

Manda Scott

We live in the middle of nowhere. So we're in a very rural area. But even so we were having a conversation last night with friends over dinner, there is a limit to how many parsnips people are prepared to eat through the winter, before they really start throwing their toys out of the pram. And you can do that in wartime, because you can just go well, you eat the parsnips, or you starve. It's your choice. There's nothing else there. But when you're in a global economy, then that's much harder.

Sarah Ichioka

I was really interested in the wartime footing framing, because obviously, one of the things that Michael and I point out in our book, or that fascinates us is how the metaphors that we use can really shape the way that we think about things with the wartime footing example, I completely am on side with the idea that we need to capture this sense of urgency and capture the sense of the need for collective action that that evokes, especially for thinking maybe about our grandparents’ stories from World War Two. But at the same time, I think one of the major challenges of the climate and biodiversity crises is trying to also do the work to understand that, where is the enemy? Or who is the enemy? And possibly the thinking about the framing, our tendency to want to frame situations in terms of having an enemy that we need to come together to combat. Even a lot of the language around ‘combating climate change’ it's, you know, it goes a lot of the way there, but I think it can, perhaps, limit our understanding of the necessary transformations.

Manda Scott

Yeah, it holds us in the old paradigm, doesn't it and no problem is solved from the mindset that created it. And it's this, it's this binary win/lose paradigm that got us here in the first place. So I think it's a deeply unhelpful metaphor, frankly. But it's becoming increasingly prevalent. So things like this podcast are going to be finding ways to create other paradigms.

[Excerpt ends]

Michael Pawlyn

On Uncanny Landscapes which is presented by Justin Hopper, he asked me to expand on our ideas of Possibilism - this was the subject we decided to focus on in the first chapter in Flourish because in many ways it sets the ground for everything we say subsequently - the importance of maximising our agency.

[Audio excerpt from Uncanny Landscapes]

Michael Pawlyn

The idea of possibilism, was a term coined by Hans Rosling, the late, great health specialists who gave some wonderful TED talks with, with the animated graphics and so on. And the point is that optimism and pessimism imply some sense of inevitability about the future, and you either feel positively or negatively disposed to that. And the idea of being a possibilist is that you decide on the future you want, and then you collaborate and work on actually bringing that future about. So you see, the future is something that can be shaped. And I think that gets you into a much more constructive frame of mind. And rather than falling back on stories of inevitability, along the lines of You know, well, you know, we're all doomed, and humans are a curse on the planet and or I think it's all going to be marvelous, and technology is going to come to the to the rescue and so on. 

That's just it's, you know, it's to have such an undistinguished, unquantified plan, the whole future of humanity to just base it on a positive story, not backed up by firm numbers or anything. I mean, that, to me, that is the height of recklessness. And I see a lot of that. I see a lot of a lot of architects just saying, Well, I'm, I'm hugely optimistic. Well, look, sorry. You know, we are in a dire situation, we carry on as we are, we need a plan for the future with numbers that add up. And so one of the key characteristics of a possiblist that we articulate in this first chapter is about evidence based approaches. And we celebrate certain champions like the economist Esther Duflo, who's transformed the whole realm of overseas development aid, and so on. And then we give some examples that are closer to the built environment. And so these are people who do have a much more thorough evidence based approach. So we can be more confident that those ideas have a chance of working rather than just based on opinions and increasingly divisive arguments.

[Excerpt ends]

Sarah Ichioka

I had the opportunity to speak with Annick van Rinsum of the Pakhuis de Zwijger podcast. Pakhuis is an independent platform for urban innovation in Amsterdam. I really appreciated how gently rigorous Annick was in her questioning–she really made me think through everything we have written in Flourish. Here, for example, is how she encouraged me to think carefully about what we mean when we write about possibilism and agency.

[Audio excerpt from Pakhuis de Zwijger]

Sarah Ichioka

Michael and I feel that the first paradigm is key to unlocking all of the subsequent ones, which is the idea of moving beyond a binary of optimism and pessimism. So this mindset of possibilism, is married with a mindset of expanded agency.

Annick van Rinsum

So in what way do you define what is possible? And how do ideas about technical possibility and cultural possibility tie into this?

Sarah Ichioka

I think that this is an area that designers generally are very well equipped for, you know, they're meant to be able to master sort of generalist research quite quickly. They're meant to be able to define a brief and then propose a strategy within that brief. So if you if you think about redeploying that skill set towards this condition, designers are actually pretty well positioned to take on take it on, but it's just a matter of being able to expand our thinking beyond just like the design of an individual object, or the design of an individual building that's currently seen as cut off from the broader social ecological context within which it sits.

Annick van Rinsum

But I also feel like what you consider to be possible also depends on your belief if we can arrive at social change quickly or not. So how do you deal with that factor?

Sarah Ichioka

I think that we can use our research skills to identify examples where social change has happened. And, you know, we cite the social science researcher, Erica Chenoweth, who has pointed out in her research, looking at a number of social movements over say, the last 50 years that actually you only need a relatively small amount of the population to be committed to a change for it to eventually happen. So I think if we, I actually think that one of the key skills of being a possibilist is the ability to look for the signal and to screen out the noise. I think it's very easy to just adopt a very passive attitude towards everything. And that would be the optimist / pessimist degenerative paradigm. It's like, I am sort of a passive recipient of the news. And as opposed to thinking, like, Hey, I should do something. And I can do something, and to try to use that if you want to use that frame, then you're thinking, Well, what can I do? How would I do it? Who would I do it with? And suddenly, it's just, you know, as Michael and I put it, we think that we should be working together so that what might seem improbable now actually just becomes probable? 

Annick van Rinsum

Exactly. But that's kind of the problem with agency. Because if you don't take agency, I don't know if you can say it like that. But I think you'll get what I mean, if you don't take agency and nothing changes, you can say, see, it was impossible to change. But if you take agency, there's a chance that you will succeed, and there's a chance that nothing will change. And therefore, like the people that don't take agency of this world, they are never technically wrong. How do we deal with that?

Sarah Ichioka

I know the grumpy guy at the end of the bar, who's so happy to be right when things go wrong? I'm really glad that you raised that because I think it's an important clarification to also understand that when I think if one's not very careful, it can come across as incredibly privileged as well to discuss like, the power that we have as individuals. And Michael and I are advocating largely for collective agency, because some of you know, many, many of these issues are broader, systemic, structural issues that will not be changed by one person acting alone, but rather, they will be changed by many people understanding that they need to take responsibility by acting together to intervene.

[Excerpt ends]

Michael Pawlyn

That was brilliant. And on The Green Urbanist podcast again the host [Ross O’Cellaigh] was really keen to explore a bit more about biomimicry. He wasn't that familiar with it, and what it says see how it was actually perhaps a sort of deeper discipline than is often portrayed in media, articles about, you know, trains designed based on bird beaks and so on.

[Excerpt from The Green Urbanist]

Michael Pawlyn

We've all heard about termite mounds and spiders’ webs, and so on. But actually, a huge number of the challenges that we have in designing for the built environment have been solved in biology in equivalent ways. So ways of cooling buildings, passively, ultra low energy forms of manufacturing, zero waste systems, ways to make large scale mineral structures that actually take carbon out of the environment, rather than the other way around. So there are a lot of good solutions for technical challenges. And very often those solutions will have evolved to deliver that function or that solution with an absolute fraction of the energy or physical resources of conventional human made solutions. And where we are now facing a planetary emergency, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's not enough to just mitigate negatives, we have to get to the point where we're optimizing positives. And really, I think it's no exaggeration to say that when humanity gets to a point of being net positive, that will be an absolute turning point in civilization. And it's a turning point that we need to get to as soon as possible. It really is urgent. And to help us get there, in my view, there's no better source of solutions than biology because life on Earth has evolved with the benefit of 3.8 billion years of research and development and, and what we have today is a vast catalog of incredibly, highly refined solutions.

[Excerpt ends]

Sarah Ichioka

I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak about regenerative urbanism in the context of Asia with Fabian Clavier, the host of Cities in Mind. And I appreciated how Fabian anchored our conversation in the practical aspects of regeneration, including his query about how we can equip built environment professionals to design as nature as we advocate in Flourish.

[Audio excerpt from Cities in Mind]

Fabien Clavier

So architects and planners, they usually that they don't have, you know, degrees in ecology or biology or, you know, just systems, or nature and yet that they need to learn much more about those issues, you know, when they do their their work, and when they develop their practice. So more like you know, a question to you. So how could we change that? How can we maybe better train architects, planners and built environment professionals? And what will it take really to make them aware of the possibilities, as you mentioned in the book, but also make them aware of what they can do, you know, how they can act and have positive impacts.

Sarah Ichioka

That's such an important angle to consider. I think that for me, it all comes back to collaboration. And the idea that an architect or an engineer or a planner, doesn't need to know it all, right, but what they do need to know is what they don't know. And have that be a point of, you know, almost have pride that they're able to understand where they need help, rather than to try to assert some sort of surface level of understanding, as we're seeing in a parallel field, right, you can see a lot in the area of finance now, where a lot of people are acquiring a very superficial understanding of like, what ESG finance means, and suddenly, they're an ESG expert. And I think similarly, for those of us working in the built environment, what's really important is to understand that there are these other deep and rich expertises and experiences that we should be bringing into our team as collaborators. So can we look at much more diverse and collaborative project teams? Where should every built environment project above a certain scale actually have an ecologist as a key part of the team, for example? Or should every urban development project of a certain scale have an anthropologist who's embedded on their team? I think that that sort of embraces a richness of disciplines. Certainly we, you know, we all need to learn more. But I think we all can also ask for help. And there are plenty of amazing professionals with this experience or not, not necessarily even professionals, you can be an expert without being professionalized right, but these amazing fonts of wisdom and knowledge, and relationships, who can be engaged.

[Excerpt ends]

Michael Pawlyn

On the Endless Vital Activity podcast [hosted by David Johnston] we discussed Brian Eno’s ideas of how change happens and how all change starts in the imagination.

[Excerpt from Endless Vital Activity]

David Johnston

When I mentioned the Brian Eno quote about dreaming earlier, I noticed you had a reaction to that. And I didn't want to miss it. Was there something that you wanted to say?

Michael Pawlyn

Oh, sure. Yeah, well spotted. Yeah. So, Sarah and I love that quote. And I think it's, it's so useful, because for me that there's not enough of a debate at the moment about how change happens. And in my realm of architecture and engineering, and so on, a lot of the discussion is simply revolving around carbon, and how do we make zero carbon possible and so on. And of course, that's important, but I don't think we're going to get to where we need to be by talking in that way, it's just too mechanistic. And that Brian Eno quote, was just a fantastic example of how change can happen. It can start in the imagination. And by articulating an idea or a dream, it starts to become –I’m kind of quoting or paraphrasing Brian Eno here–So when you articulate an idea or a dream, it starts to become true in people's minds, because they start to compare reality to that dream. And that new reality starts to become a kind of invisible force that pulls change into being. So all change arguably starts in the imagination. And by talking about it, and then implementing it, and learning from that, and sharing it and repeating it and trying to do it better each time. That's one really important way in which we can make change happen.

[Excerpt ends]

Michael Pawlyn

At the end of the Endless Vital Activity podcast I pick up on call to action which forms the concluding tone of Flourish.

[Excerpt from Endless Vital Activity]

Michael Pawlyn

You know Jeremy Lent argues in his book that we're now at a kind of bifurcation points, you know, we could continue with techno utopian fantasy that so many in Silicon Valley seem to subscribe to. And, you know, following Raymond Kurzweil’s idea that our destiny as humans is to transcend biology. Well, you know, if you look at where that could lead, it could lead to a very divided society in which a tiny number of rich people engaged in life extending technologies and gene editing, and so much so they've effectively become a different species, while the rest of humanity is literally left to fight over a trashed biosphere. And I think it's so much more appealing to chart a different course, for humanity to overcome our dualism, our separation from nature, pursue holistic ends, and acknowledge that the only reasonable future is one based on justice. So an ecological civilization in which we can all live a good quality of life, and we can increasingly inhabit a new role as humans as co-enablers of the flourishing of all life for all time.

[Excerpt ends]

Sarah Ichioka

That’s a lot of ground to cover! And maybe it felt like a whistle stop tour or whatever regenerative alternative we want to use to describe that.

Michael Pawlyn

Well, if any of our listeners are gluttons for punishment, there's about 10 hours worth of listening there if they really want.

Sarah Ichioka

Exactly and we’ll link to it all in the shownotes. 

Michael Pawlyn

Seriously, one of the things that was really encouraging is that for many of the podcasts we were interviewed for, we were in great company alongside some of the people whose thinking we really admire.

Sarah Ichioka

So, a big thank you to all of the podcasters who were curious about “Flourish” and invited us into their conversations and to connect with their audience. Including those we’ve had time to quote from today, but others we haven’t, but will also link from the show notes and share on other channels. 

Michael Pawlyn

And for all of you who prefer listening over reading, we encourage you to buy a copy of our new audio edition of “Flourish”, narrated by voice artist Nicola Burgess. You can find it on Audible, Apple Books & Amazon. If there are aspects of Flourish that you particularly like - whether in the book, audiobook, podcast interviews or online lectures, please let us know through our website. We may do a second season of podcast episodes, but no promises just yet.

Sarah Ichioka

Keep’em guessing. If you're interested to learn more about principles of regenerative design, or any of the podcasts that we've been discussing together today, you're warmly invited to visit our website, which is simply flourish-book.com. That website will also include links to all of our socials.

The podcast is based on the book Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency by Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn. This special episode was co-produced by Sarah and Michael with support from Aubrey Vazquez. The podcast is edited and features brilliant original music by Tobias Withers.

Podcast cover art by Studio Folder