RegenBuild is a network building the digital commons to communicate, incentivise, value and fund regenerative action in the built environment.

Mission 🎯

Our mission is to align the AECO industry and build the commons to solve coordination problems and transition the built environment to a regenerative paradigm.

Vision 👁️

Our vision is to create the conditions to establish regeneration as the dominant paradigm in the built environment.

Problem(s) 🚫

The construction industry is one of the highest contributors to climate change and resource consumption. It is responsible for around 40% of global carbon emissions, 30% of waste generation, and 20% of water consumption. These emissions arise from materials like cement, steel, and aluminium used in construction, as well as energy consumption for heating, cooling, and lighting in buildings and infrastructure. The materials used in building construction account for around 9% of overall energy-related CO2 emissions.

Due to the decentralised nature of the industry, it has been challenging to affect change at a systemic level to common problems around the globe. Below are the identified issues that need to be addressed for a industry wide transformation -

1. Misaligned incentives for stakeholders to invest on improved building efficiency.
2. Lack of innovative financial models to fund solutions.
3. The return on investment is not always lucrative enough.
4. Challenging to coordinate with stakeholders to align on goals and solutions.
5. No standard, versatile BIM-based, digital-first system to evaluate a building’s performance efficiently and cost-effectively.
6. The existing certification systems are tedious, manual and expensive.

Solution(s) ✨

Systems Change, not Band-aid Change!

While there are many startups and organisations working to address the upper level problems in the industry, RegenBuild is focused on the bottom 3 levels of the iceberg as stated previously and in the image below.

Changing the trajectory of urban development and the built environment posits the need for better systems to tackle the root problems. We need better information flows, feedback loops, innovative financial models, incentives and reward mechanisms for stakeholders to push beyond the status quo and contribute towards a regenerative paradigm.

• 📄 Read our thesis - Introduction to RegenBuild
• 🤿 Deep Dive into our approach - A Systems Perspective to Foster Regeneration in the Built Environment

To offer concrete solutions to the problems, RegenBuild is working on the following commons ⏬

• Framework - A common language and methodology of regeneration to understand projects' goals & performance, avoid greenwashing, set higher benchmarks and communicate those with all the stakeholders.
• Platform - A dMRV platform with a unified workflow connecting experts and validators to holistically analyse and validate building performance through all phases of a project's lifecycle.
• Protocol - A system to collectively own, operate and govern the incentives that guide actions of all stakeholders and equitably distribute rewards based on contributions and regenerative impact of the project.

RegenBuild commons would foster the AECO (architecture, engineering, construction, operations) industry’s transition to a regenerative paradigm over the 21st century.

Potential Impact 🌍

🏡 Built Environment has the highest potential to address climate change with the least amount of capital expenditure. It is a solution for both mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The solutions RegenBuild is working on are immensely valuable to the industry as they solve several problems.

1. Allows the industry to pivot from sustainability to a regenerative mental model. It builds the culture and community to improve coordination and collectively build the infrastructure to enable this transition.
2. The dMRV infrastrucuture being open source solves data interoperability problems in BIM(Building Information Modeling) faced by architects, engineers and other stakeholders in the construction industry. This enables more experts to perform environmental related analysis in a much easier and faster way than what is currently possible.
3. Internal feedback loops to incentivise and reward regenerative actions leads to systemic adoption across the world, resulting in more climate positive behaviours like reducing GHG emissions, water savings, eco friendly materials, improved biodiversity and human health, etc.
4. Brings transparecy and rebustness to impact reporting in the industry and builds a market to allow more funding to flow into projects aiming to pursue regenerative goals.

When these solutions are combined into a coherent protocol governed by prominent industry stakeholders, it amplifies the value and impact through adjacent people and organisations utilizing the commons infrastructure.

Work since GG20 ✅

• RegenBuild Framework 🕸️ - Extensive research done on the various regenerative frameworks applicable to the built environment. Published a couple of articles to share insights and invite feedback from the community.

  • In Need of a Shared Language for Regeneration in the Built Environment
  • Protocol Making to Regenerate the Built Environment

• Network Building 👥 - Built deeper connections with aligned groups working on similar initiatives such as Urban Regenerators and A Regenerative Place.

• dMRV Workflow ⚙️ - Made some progress on the Proof of Regen Design workflow PoC.

Fund Allocation 💰

• RegenBuild Framework
• Network Building
• Building the dMRV workflow
• Operations

Roadmap 🛣️

• Continue research on framework and publish learnings.
• Making a network map of stakeholders and organisations in the built environment regeneration ecosystem to understand needs and plan the next steps.
• Building Proof of Regen Design dMRV workflow PoC.
• Playbook to showcase medium to long term strategy and sustainability of project.

Our Team 👤

Arsenii Kirillov - Software Developer, PhD

Arsenii is doing PhD in Built Environment from Politecnica Delle Marche. He’s doing experiments with buildings knowledge management & graph databases. He is contributing to the dMRV workflow with some python code and also works with C, Neo4j, Speckle, BlenderBIM & Revit.

Darshan Dilipkumar - Computational Designer, MSc

Darshan is doing MSc in computational methods in architecture from Cardiff University. He works on transforming complex geometric information from various BIM authoring tools to create clean analytical models for various use cases.

Guru Vishwas - Source and Steward

Guru has over 6 years of experience in the construction industry across various roles with a background in civil engineering and a master’s in construction management and sustainability. He was previously a product and strategy lead at SD+, India’s first platform to help real estate projects become more sustainable.

Una Wang - Lead Researcher, PhD

Una is a multifaceted professional, embodying various roles in her career. She is leading the project no1s1 at ETH Zurich as a PhD candidate. Her research explores topics such as decentralised autonomous buildings, DePIN, digital twin, IoT and regenerative built environments. Leveraging her background in architecture, she thrives as a builder and maker. She brings ideas to life through cyber-physical integrated prototypes and products.

Challenges Faced 🚧

• After recieving some feedback from prominant figures in the industry, we had to reflect and change our approach on the framework. This made some of the research redundant and set on a different direction that we are currectly on.
• One of the developers due to health related reasons has not been able to work on the dMRV workflow and it has stagnated progress. The required skills to work on our tech stack is hard to find and we are finding alternative solutions to resume work.
• The lack of sufficient funds has hindered our ability to hire full time developers affecting our speed of execution.