Page 7 - JCAU-5-4

Journal of Chinese

Architecture and Urbanism

VIEWPOINT
Energy manifesto: Principles for regenerative

architecture, arts, and design

Rachel Armstrong*
Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Ghent, Brussels, Belgium
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Regenerative Architecture)

Abstract

This viewpoint outlines the environmentally toxic view of energy that frames
industrial modernism, which is fundamentally anti-life. An alternative, regenerative
worldview is proposed, offering new ideals that are supposed to redesign the
world by working in concert with the energies of the living world in ways that are
fundamentally life-promoting. Centered on microbial metabolisms that form the
living base of the biosphere, referred to as the microbial commons, the manifesto
takes a decentralized approach to our engagement with energy so that diversity,
resilience, and interdependence are valued through the commons of energies, which
is powered by microbial metabolisms forming a substrate for regenerative design
to enable the establishment of a vitalizing interspecies relationship with the earth,
nature, and each other.
*Corresponding author:
Rachel Armstrong
(grayanat@yahoo.co.nz) Keywords: Energy; Regenerative; Industrial; Commons of energies; Metabolism; Electrons
Citation: Armstrong, R. (2023).
Energy manifesto: Principles for
regenerative architecture, arts,
and design. Journal of Chinese 1. Introduction
Architecture and Urbanism, 5(4):
0862. Regenerative design exceeds the performance of sustainable buildings that strive to
https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0862
be energetically neutral with respect to their context, by creating built environments
Received: June 30, 2023 that enrich local ecosystems (Fahmy et al., 2019). The concept of energy is a key to the
Accepted: July 10, 2023 formation of these regenerative living spaces and habitats, which requires interrogation
within a much broader context for a practice of the built environment that is compatible
Published Online: August 7, 2023
with an enlivened natural realm.
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s).
This is an open-access article The word “energy” originates from the Greek word “energhéia,” a concept that
distributed under the terms of the Aristotle associated with the state of being active or alive. This association with the life
Creative Commons Attribution- flow that sustains living things is also embodied in the Chinese concept of “qi” and Prana
Non-Commercial 4.0 International
(CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all in Hinduism and Buddhism. Energy became an abstraction, a calculable force that was
non-commercial use, distribution, dissociated from the living world through the modern scientific understanding of the
and reproduction in any medium, term.
provided the original work is
properly cited. The modern concept of energy is based on a reductionist and mechanistic view of
Publisher’s Note: AccScience the world, which regards energy as a quantifiable and transferable commodity that can
Publishing remains neutral with be extracted, harnessed, and controlled for human purposes (Sorrell, 2015). This view of
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional energy is closely linked to the dominant economic system, which values the marketplace,
affiliations growth, efficiency, and profit over social and environmental well-being. Construction

Volume 5 Issue 4 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0862