One thousand feet above the bustling city of Mumbai, the Palais Royale shines as a model of modern sustainability. As one of India’s LEED Platinum buildings, the residential and commercial skyscraper boasts efficient material use, a composting system that uses worms to break down organic waste, a rainwater harvesting system, and a large indoor garden filled with lush plants and towering trees.

Digital rendering of Palais Royale Source: http://colorlibrary.blogspot.com/2012/08/tallest-building-in-india-palais-royale.html

But strip away this veneer of flashy green features and underneath lurks the massive waste of a fundamentally flawed building.

Out of the building’s two million cubic meters of space, there are only 120 apartments. With tennis courts, three swimming pools, a seven-level parking garage, and one of the world’s highest indoor atriums, the Palais Royale grossly wastes space in a densely developed city and diverts valuable resources to excessive features that pander to its wealthy residents, effectively outweighing any environmental savings the building’s design can offer. The Palais Royale’s ‘green bling’ markets the building as sustainable while ignoring the deeper philosophical intentions of the sustainability movement and excluding lower socio-economic classes.

Examples like these are used in Designing for Hope: Pathways to Regenerative Sustainability to astutely illustrate how the mainstream approach to sustainable built environments is problematic. Authors Dr. Dominique Hes and Dr. Chrisna du Plessis, professors of Architecture at the University of Melbourne and of Construction Economics at the University of Pretoria, respectively, explain that the modern lens through which we often view sustainability is flawed: it becomes a checklist of unconnected elements to be studied and resolved without consideration of large-scale impacts on the environment and community in which a building is constructed.

As the title suggests, Hes and du Plessis believe that an ecological worldview and a shift in our approach to design can cure our sustainability and climate change woes.

Designing for Hope aims to redirect the global community towards methods that are leading the way to effective ecologically integrated buildings and landscapes. With a textbook-like style, the book synthesizes the up-to-date ideas and practices of leading environmental experts and design practitioners. Each chapter focuses on a different philosophical and practical approach to environmental design, such as biomimicry, Positive Development, and regenerative design.

The Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Singapore is a model for environmental progress in the built environment. It demands one third less energy than its peer hospitals, uses 100% renewable energy sources to heat its water, and features ample green space that boosts biodiversity, but that’s just a drop in the bucket. The building goes beyond minimizing its environmental harm and strives to add value to its patients and the surrounding community.

Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Singapore
Source: yoursingapore.com

The hospital improves the health of its patients through biophilic design elements. Biophilic design is based on the idea that humans are attracted to and are healthier in natural environments, and encourages the incorporation of natural elements and materials into building design. With a large interior garden, rushing streams, and fish filled ponds, Khoo Teck Puat’s grounds provide a peaceful place for patients and community members to interact with nature.

Vegetation that surrounds hospital’s central courtyard.
Source: www.tropicalenvironment.com.sg

The hospital’s design also embodies aspects of the Positive Development approach, which aims to have developed land contribute more value to the local biological and human communities than the original undeveloped land did. The building hosts an organic roof-top farm that local community members can tend. The produce from the farm is used for inpatient meals and is also available to local residents, strengthening the social ties between the hospital and the community.

Khoo Teck Puat is just one of many case studies in Designing for Hope that demonstrate the potential for holistic environmental design in the real world.

Filled with case studies and photographs, the book explains nuanced environmental concepts in simple, clear prose that is accessible to the everyday reader. Those with more advanced knowledge of sustainable design will be stimulated by the book’s emphasis on micro- and macro-scale design perspectives and its systems-thinking tool-kit for regenerative design. One downside of the book, however, is its cost — the paperback version is $60.00, and e-book version is not much cheaper.

Designing for Hope offers a refreshing perspective on how design can positively impact humans and the environment. It is reassuring that experts like Hes and du Plessis believe that the problems we face can be addressed through practical and achievable means. The bright future that they believe is possible dispels the dark pessimism and fear that have long dominated the discourse about climate change. Climate change poses a challenge, yet it also offers an opportunity for imagination, creativity, and innovation to take place. Humans can shape society into something new and utterly different from what this world has ever seen before. Indeed, there is hope.