Join us for the next event in a new Series: Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki Lincoln University Excellence Series. This series has been designed to showcase leadership in various disciplines including the opportunity to promote the University’s distinctive and impactful applied research. This series celebrates research excellence and promotes a public forum to a broader community, highlighting Lincoln University’s specialist land-based contribution to driving New Zealand’s prosperity and intergenerational wellbeing.
We’ve been taught to view people and nature as opposing forces - what people do and the way we live inevitably harms nature, while also what’s good for nature constrains what’s possible for us. Consequently when it comes to our environment almost every contentious proposal comes back to a debate between development or protection.
Regenerative design explores a different position, to ask how can we grow a place where both people and nature thrive?
In this strongly visual presentation five key positions for nature positive design are investigated, through exploring a range of design and research projects we’ve undertaken with design and research partners that have included the Department of Conservation, Ngāi Tahu Property, Yealands, Herenga a Nuku, Pyramid Valley Wines, Conservation Volunteers New Zealand, Air New Zealand, Eden Project UK, Manaaki Whenua, Marian College, Antarctica New Zealand, Manawhenua Ki Mohua, Development West Coast and Tiaki Maniototo.
Regenerative design is founded on imagining futures that aren’t simply the extrapolation of past or present forces. Likewise, this presentation will argue that the future makeup of the landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t have to be the intensification of current trajectories, but instead one that repositions this country’s deep nature at the heart of how we live, what we produce, and who we are.
Join us as Professor Mick Abbott explores this concept and discusses how regenerative design can lead to thriving people and nature.
Timings
4.00 pm - Networking and drinks
4.15 pm - Welcome & introduction from LU Vice-Chancellor
4.20 pm - Presentation from Speaker
4.50 pm - Summary
5.00 pm - Networking and questions over drinks and nibbles
5.30pm - Event Ends
About Our Speaker
Mick’s research focuses on using design methods to connect people to nature. He is especially interested in how we can replace prevalent paradigms of human activity negatively impacting environments, to instead find ways human impacts in protected areas and productive landscapes can be a direct generator of environmental value, and also economic, social and cultural wealth. This research is of deep relevance to New Zealand’s global value proposition and the nature-based values that underpin its identity and with it tourism and primary produce exports. His work is undertaken in partnership with government, iwi, industry, and community partners. He co-leads, with colleagues at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Kunming University of Science and Technology in Yunnan, the ‘Three Brothers’ research consortium. This ongoing collaboration identifies ways protected area sites in China and Aotearoa can strengthen environmental values while also fostering strong cultural and social associations, and is a distinctive, emergent area of expertise that New Zealand can offer globally. As part of this, Mick is developing methodologies that extend beyond design’s traditional problem-solving focus and into ways, it can provide novel methods and outcomes.
Research Profile Mick Abbott
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