Regenerative Design Highlight

In northern Minnesota, two rival school districts once struggled to offer students the experiences the future demands. Today, they’ve come together to form Rock Ridge Public Schools, and built two new elementary schools and a shared high school. At one of these schools, North Star Elementary in downtown Virginia, more than two-thirds of the site has been converted into public parkland. The old gym remains, but the rest of the campus has been deconstructed and reshaped, reconnecting the community to itself and to the natural environment around it.  

For Jen Garman, an architect and regenerative design leader at Cuningham, the firm behind Rock Ridge’s three new learning environments, projects like these are precisely what the emerging field is about. “Sustainability was always about net-zero,” she explains, “about not taking away from others so they can live the way we do now. Regenerative design asks a different question: what does good look like?” It’s a shift from scarcity to abundance, from simply doing less harm to actively creating positive impact—for people, communities, and ecosystems.  

Garman’s approach spans more than the materials or energy systems in a building; it’s a holistic lens that considers human well-being, environmental justice, and social equity. “Design is not neutral,” she says. “Everything we do has an impact, and it can be positive or negative. Regenerative design forces us to challenge the status quo, to rethink everything we’ve learned, and to ask, how can we connect people to nature? How can this space create belonging?”  

For Garman, that translates into careful attention to daylight, biophilic design, and materiality. Wood, for instance, is more than a structural element; its warmth affects how occupants perceive and interact with their space. In the North Star Elementary project, which Cuningham designed in collaboration with Widseth, this thinking extended to the broader community. By keeping parking off-site and converting a large portion of the school campus into parkland, the design team provided more than a learning environment—they created a shared community asset that supports both social cohesion and environmental resilience.  

Regenerative design is still emerging within the field of architecture, Garman notes. While awareness is growing, practitioners face challenges integrating regenerative principles into everyday practice, from materials selection to energy and water systems, to policies that govern how buildings are funded and regulated. “The greenest building is the one that already exists,” she quotes the saying, pointing to reuse, deconstruction, and salvaging materials as key strategies for the future. There is also a growing intersection with climate resilience, from creating landscapes that withstand drought to ensuring buildings can function as community hubs during power outages or natural disasters.  

Policy plays a critical role in supporting regenerative design. Funding for restoring contaminated brownfield sites, incentives for bio-based construction materials like mass timber or hemp-lime, and standards for equitable access to daylight and tree canopy are all levers that could help make regenerative thinking the norm rather than the exception. Garman points to initiatives like the Tree Equity Score, which maps urban tree canopy and correlates it with social inequities, as illustrative of how design can intersect with larger systems of environmental justice.  

The field is still evolving, but architects like Garman see regenerative design as both a professional responsibility and an opportunity. Whether it’s through policy advocacy, local projects, or rethinking materials and methods, the movement is growing, and the work is urgent. The question is no longer just how to make buildings less bad—it’s how to make them actively good.  

For architects looking to adopt a regenerative mindset, Garman emphasizes curiosity and impact awareness. “Look at how we’ve always done things and ask: who is this helping? Who is this hurting? Socially, ecologically, environmentally, and financially. Challenge assumptions and have conversations with clients about what’s possible.”  

In a future where regenerative design is standard practice, Garman imagines communities functioning more like forests: a place where ecosystems naturally thrive. The air and water are purified, habitats built over time and preserved, food grown and sourced locally, and waste eliminated. Buildings would support not just human life but the ecosystems around them, all while fostering the equitable, walkable, and vibrant spaces that support strong communities.  

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For those curious to explore further, Jen Garman recommends the AIA Framework for Design Excellence, the International Living Future Institute, and engaging locally with community and environmental organizations to get involved closer to home.