“read this book...”    “I love this book...”      “​a beautiful curation of ideas...”    “​ I highly recommend it...”     “​A brilliant and timely summary...”
  see more reviews of Flourish below

High Praise for ​ Flourish

"I could not have hoped to start 2022 with a more inspiring read..."
Kate Raworth, Economist, Change Agent, Author: Doughnut Economics
“I love this book – partly because of the voice that the authors have given it - more like a conversation than a lecture, in spite of its considerable authenticity. It feels perfectly timed too, following a COP that barely scratched the surface of what needs to be grasped in both hands. This tells it like it is, but without stomping the table in anger - true to the Donella Meadows way.”
Mike Cook, Visiting Professor Imperial College London + 2020  Institute of Structural Engineers' Gold Medal winner 
"If you're a designer, architect or anyone else who is wondering what you could - and should - do to arrest the climate emergency and all the other major threats we face, read this book - Flourish: Design Paradigms For Our Planetary Emergency".
Alice Rawsthorn OBE, design critic, author + co-founder, the Design Emergency project
"When it comes to sustainability and the built environment, we have reached that moment when it is time to quiet the noise, put our ears to the ground and listen deeply to the ’thump’ of the Earth to know what we must do. Flourish gifts us a beautiful curation of ideas to help us hear that beat, + feel inspired to walk a different route towards creating human habitats that restore and replenish our living systems.”
Sumi Dhanarajan, Associate Director APAC, Forum for the Future.
 “One of the most enjoyable and informative reads on the topic. I highly recommend it to all those who are engaged with the agenda of the environment and who are in search of new paradigms to reverse the ongoing depletion of our living world.”
Dr Hossein Rezai (Founding Director, Web Structures; Global Design Director, Ramboll
 “A brilliant and timely summary of regenerative practice, aimed at everyone involved in shaping the built environment. Essential reading for designers, commissioners, funders and policy makers.”
Steve Tompkins, MBE, Director, Haworth Tompkins; co-founder, Architects Declare 
From Bloomberg 8th January, 2022:
The Architecture of Tomorrow Mimics Nature to Cool the Planet
It’s not just about minimizing environmental harm, but finding ways to regenerate construction materials and restore natural habitats.
There’s a new climate push in the building industry: regenerative architecture.
The sector has been trying for years to cut its sizeable carbon footprint, which was responsible for 38% of the world’s energy-related greenhouse gases in 2019. But developers need to go beyond preventing pollution if they want to help avoid catastrophic climate change, according to Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn, co-authors of a new book titled Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency.
They argue that buildings should be designed in a regenerative way — a process that mimics nature by restoring its own materials and sources of energy. It goes further than sustainable design, which seeks to reduce harm to the environment and use only essential materials.
“More than half of humanity’s total historic greenhouse-gas emissions have occurred since the concept of ‘sustainability’ entered the mainstream,” Ichioka and Pawlyn write. “It is now time to embrace a new regenerative approach to design and development.”
Their book highlights examples of regenerative design from China to Japan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Projects are still rare, but they’re a glimpse of what the future of rural and urban architecture could be."
Read the full review

Flourish:
Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency

Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn
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Book review from The Structural Engineer magazine

"This is a book that is well suited to anyone – engineer, architect, planner, contractor, client – who is interested to hear how we could evolve new ways of thinking and living that could secure the safe and just world we need to build.

COP 26 may have given us a glimmer of hope that things are starting to change, but the reality is that national governments and big businesses are simply not brave enough to initiate the paradigm shift that is needed, let alone follow it through.

In essence, the message is that we have to change our mindsets – not just use mine, but everyone's. At first, this seems daunting, but the authors both believe that such change can be contagious, so it is up to us to start the ball rolling.

The book sets out five themes, one per chapter, that illuminate a path of necessary transformation. It is a compelling narrative that helps the reader grasp the breadth of change needed without it becoming overwhelming. It is, in fact, inspiring. The authors talk to the reader as if in conversation rather than a lecture, and this makes it a rather personal journey of discovery through what is quite new territory for many of us.
Looking just briefly at these five themes shows how profound the changes must be:
  1. Possibilism: ...We must believe big change is possible and believe in possibilism.
  2. Co-evolution as nature: we ... are an integral part of the natural world, not its master. This demands a new, more generous, attitude to life around us.
  3. A longer now – deep time: we have to see ourselves within a far longer timeframe than we have become used to....
  4. Symbiogenesis: ...survival of the fittest is a poor and dangerous model for a long-term future.
  5. Planetary Health: we must rethink the measures by which we judge what is right – our living metrics. It is no secret that gross domestic product is a dangerous master... 
 
As structural engineers, many of us have embarked on a journey to use our work to reduce the harm we do to this planet and focus on the benefits we could bring. Currently there is a focus on reducing CO2 emissions that arise from our projects – the materials we use, the efficiency with which we use them, and the questions we asked about the need for new-build rather than reuse. But we can see that this will not be enough to create a zero-carbon construction industry, let alone to save the planet.
I think this book, alongside others … does set out a way we could approach the future that rings true and feels important. I hope it is read widely and that the authors’ dream of changing mindsets, one at a time, is contagious and that this will start to drive the paradigm shift we know is essential."
 
Dr Mike Cook, chair of the Institution of Structural Engineers climate emergency task group; Visiting Professor at Imperial College London; chairman of Seratech Ltd, a zero-carbon concrete startup.
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Read the full review
Book review from Museums Journal
"It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale and urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis. However, in this fascinating book, authors Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn move quickly “from alarm to action”, opening up an array of possibilities and an urgent invitation to build a thriving future together.

Drawing on thinking from diverse cultural traditions and perspectives and disciplines as varied as psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, economics, architecture and civic planning, they weave a compelling call for a systemic shift from sustainable to “regenerative” practice (defined as that which “supports the flourishing of all life, for all time”). The variety of sources provides a multitude of jumping-off points for further reading.

Both authors are built environment professionals but this book is relevant to anyone with an interest in how we make, manage and inhabit our buildings, public spaces and communities.

For museums and cultural institutions, it offers a series of particularly tantalising challenges. The authors identify the huge leverage for change that could come from looking and acting beyond our current cultural model. They write: “Cognitive neuroscience has shown that the best way to dislodge a story is not to argue against it, but to shape a different, more persuasive story.” What better place than museums and cultural spaces to examine the roots of our existing ways of working – and together explore a new and persuasive story.

The text outlines five shifts needed to address our global challenges. The first chapter, Possibilism, focuses on our human capacity for change, asking “How can we work to reclaim our individual and collective sense of power to effect change?” Museums are ideally placed to help us explore this capacity. Their collections evidence human adaptability and the enormous societal shifts we are capable of – in energy, production, consumption, transport, arts and culture as well as in ethics.

The second chapter questions our dominant anthropocentric frame, arguing that “the way humans see our relationship with nature will be critical to our species’ future prospects.” There is surely a role for our natural history collections and communal green spaces in stimulating such collective exploration.

In chapter three the authors delve into the impacts of our relationship with time – as the philosopher Roman Krznaric suggests: “We treat the future as a distant colonial outpost where we dump ecological degradation.” Exploring the potential of frames such as the “Long Now” and “Cathedral Thinking”, Ichioka and Pawlyn propose a shift from “time is money” to “time is life”. Our rich heritage sector can help us rethink prevailing ideas about time and “progress” and cultivate what the authors call a “legacy mindset”.

They go on to examine new democratic forms, mutualism and citizen activism, as well as ideas of “private sufficiency and public luxury”. They also look at the transformative potential of co-creation and citizen design.

Their final framing considers Planetary Health and, especially, pushes back against economic growth as our dominant societal driver, while offering an analysis of alternative measures of societal progress. Initiatives such as the Happy Museum Project have focused on the wellbeing of people, place and planet, and can support museums as they reimagine their purpose within this frame.

The book concludes with a rousing call to action: “We are at a critical and perilous crossroads, when we must choose to actively ‘make the road by walking’” – a phrase adapted from the poet Antonio Machado. Inviting each of us to take stock and take responsibility, the authors conclude: “This is what it means to live now.”"
Hilary Jennings in Museums Journal, Sept 2022
Book review from Resurgence magazine
"The book has five substantive chapters. Each illustrates a socio-economic paradigm, set out below, identifies solutions from the academic literature, the natural world, or other industries, and then, where possible, locates examples of good practice from the built environment.

The discussion about ‘possibilism’ asks who sets the agenda for designing the built environment. The client, city planner, architect and local activists share authority. One mayor sets out the challenge: “A city is not something that happens … you make choices every day.”
Next is a critical look at mechanistic assessment tools like cost–benefit
analysis or building accreditation, which do not adequately capture the system-wide environmental effects of developments. Instead the authors advocate applying general principles such as sourcing materials locally.

The book goes on to argue that short-termism impedes good long-term decision-making – the financial calculus discounts the long-term benefits of conserving materials and energy. Instead of stewarding resources like our metal ores, sand and aggregates, we down-cycle resources. We should treat buildings as ‘material banks’ with closed-loop cycles of repair and reuse.

The authors then explore the idea of symbiosis. This chapter identifies several collectively conceived buildings in traditional Philippine societies, and small experimental ones in the west like Los Angeles Eco-Village. But these are few, as symbiosis is antithetical to the property market.

The book ends with case studies on how buildings contribute to human development beyond monetary return. These include localising food growth within cities, such as Singapore’s ambition to increase food resilience, replacing fossil-fuel-based energy systems with energy efficiency and building-integrated renewables, and reducing the use of toxic materials.
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Flourish sketches a new agenda for built environment professionals to make their profession part of the solution, not the problem. But, as the authors recognise, the system that needs to change is far wider than building professionals alone, and the book’s radical and attractive vision invites a wider audience to the conversation."
Prashant Vaze in Resurgence, May/June 2022 (read the full review)