RESTORE Regenerative technologies for the indoor environment - Inspirational guidelines for practitioners

Proper technology solution-sets can enable a regenerative indoor environment for building users and for the planet, thereby ensuring occupant wellbeing and health. Several aspects are considered for high indoor environmental quality, such as hygro-thermal comfort, visual comfort, indoor soundscape, indoor air quality and a pleasant ambiance. Regenerative indoor environmental quality must be achieved, through the minimization of environmental and social impacts linked to the solutions, while making opti- mal use of resources throughout the entire set of life cycles. Key technologies can promote a paradigmatic shift in building design from “less bad” to “more regener- ative”. However, proper technologies need a dedicated evaluation framework for aware selection within a comprehensive decision-making process. The activities of Working Group Four of the COST Action RESTORE were undertaken with the aim of defining the aspects that determine a regenerative indoor environment, so that all the technologies and their characteristics that provide this “regenerativeness” may be defined. Practitioners can approach aware design of indoor regenerative environments with examples of solution-sets within the building domain and case studies. Regenerative design is built on the awareness that humans and the built environment exist together within natural systems. As such, Regenerative Design is aimed at reversing the damage that has been done, restoring ecosystems, so that they will thrive and evolve. As regards the design of spaces, re- generative design places occupant wellbeing centre stage. Here, the salutogenic focus is on making wellbeing part of the regenerative paradigm, rather than the reductionist approach of sustainable design that targets the absence of ill health. The term salutogenesis, coined by Aaron Antonovsky, means ‘gen- eration of health’.