Net-Positive Design practice; Positive Development Theory
Notable work
The STARfish design app http://netpositivedesign.org
Professor Janis Birkeland is an authority on, and friendly critic of, contemporary 'sustainable' architecture, planning, management, and design.[1][2][3] She began her career as a sustainable architect, city planner and lawyer in San Francisco.[4] After relocating to Australia in 1981, she undertook a PhD on planning for sustainability.[5][6] From 1992, she developed and taught sustainable development and design courses at five universities. In over 150 publications, she challenged the latest thinking in sustainability,[7] including three textbooks: Design for Sustainability (2002),[8]Positive Development (2008),[9][10] and Net-Positive Design (2020).[11] According to her, progressive sustainable design and development paradigms used weak goals, standards,[12] indicators,[13] processes,[14] strategies,[15] and tools.[16] Exemplar green buildings even fail to even offset their own additional damage.[17]
Birkeland's contributions redefined the boundaries of sustainability.[18][19] Her original premise was that, paradoxically, genuine sustainability could be achieved through urban development. However, this would require the built environment to be totally re-conceived.[20] Her 'Positive Development' theory explains the incapacity of current intellectual and physical constructs to achieve genuine (whole-system) sustainability, and how they could be reconstructed to do so.[21] Her 'net-positive design' paradigm aimed to reverse planetary overshoot, climate change, biodiversity losses, etc.,[22] and to return global and per capita levels of consumption and pollution well below planetary limits.[23][23] Among other things, this requires increasing nature relative to pre-urban conditions.[24][25] She always stressed that eco-positive retrofitting (remodelling) of cities and buildings was a priority due to for example, the material flows in both ordinary and green construction.[26][27] Birkeland's contributions are gradually being incorporated into sustainable design paradigms.[28][29]
In a nutshell, Positive Development theory and practice prodded regenerative design to go further: to increase the 'public estate' (environmental security, universal access to the means of survival, etc.) and to increase the 'ecological base' (ecosystem functions and services, biodiversity, etc.) in order to reverse overshoot and create positive interrelationships.[30][31] The logic underlying Positive Development theory led to unique proposals for sustainable forms of governance,[32][33] decision-making frameworks,[34][35] planning methods,[36][37] architecture,[38][39] design practices,[40][41] participation processes,[42][43] and assessment tools.[44][45] Net-positive design also inspired novel design concepts such as Green Scaffolding,[46][47] and building-integrated 'eco-services' for people, structures and nature.[48][49] Birkeland devised a new design and assessment method, called 'STARfish' to enable design for net-positive outcomes.[50][51] It is the antithesis of other sustainability assessment tools and corrects three dozen of their common defects.[52][53]
^Hes, Dominique; Du Plessis, Chrisna (2015). Designing for hope: pathways to regenerative sustainability. Milton Park, Abingdon New York: Routledge. Chapter 5. ISBN978-1-315-75537-3.
^Birkeland, J. (2005) Building Assessment Systems: Reversing Environmental Impacts, in Time for New Tools, Australian Institute of Planners, Queensland.
^Birkeland, J. (2003) 'Beyond Zero Waste' in Societies for a SustainableFuture, Proceedings of the Third UKM-UC Conference, University of Canberra. 14–15 April 2003.
^Birkeland, J. (2013) Positive Development: Design for Urban Climate Mitigation and Ecological Gains, in Pushing the Boundaries: Net Positive Buildings, CaGBC Sustainable Building Conference SB13, Vancouver, Canada, June 4–6.
^Birkeland, J. (2005) Design for Ecosystem Services: A New Paradigm for Eco-design, in SB05 Tokyo Action for Sustainability: The World Sustainable Building Conference. http://www.sb05.com/homeE.html
^Birkeland, J. (2008) Challenging Best Practice in Subtropical Design in From fault-lines to straight-lines - Subtropical urbanism in 20-20. Subtropical Cities 2008 Conference, pp.1-9. Sept 3-6.
^Birkeland, J. (1995) 'A Critique of Ecological Architecture' in Protecting the Future - ESD in Action, Wollongong, NSW, 7 December, pp. 397-402.
^Birkeland, J. (2009) Positive Development: A Critique of Green Building, RMIT and QUT Green Building and Design Conference, Brisbane, May 15.
^Birkeland, J. (2008) Space Frame Walls: Facilitating Positive Development, Proceedings of the 2008 World Sustainable Building Conference. Melbourne, Australia, September 22–25