The ReBuilt Annual Meeting 2024: Envisioning the Future of a Regenerative Built Environment

The ReBuilt project held its second annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia last week, bringing together a diverse group of partners, advisors, and experts. The 7-day event served as an important milestone to further develop the project and explore the future of the regenerative built environment and its potential in different regions of the world.

The ReBuilt project

Transition Pathways Towards a Regenerative Built Environment, or ReBuilt, promotes the novel concept of a regenerative built environment and demonstrates how it can be put into practice. The aim is to transform the built environment from a carbon source to a carbon sink, improving and sustaining habitats for people and the planet. The project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV), is active in four partner city-regions: Berlin-Brandenburg, Paro-Thimphu, Denpasar-Bali, and Cape Town-Western Cape. In each of these regions, we are exploring ways to reverse the negative impacts of construction on natural ecosystems. This will require a fundamental change in the way we design, maintain and construct our built environment and landscapes. The project also includes a global study of the supply and demand of bio-based materials for future urban construction. Read more about ReBuilt here.

The 2024 Annual Meeting

This year, we were delighted to hold our annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia. We thank our ReBuilt partners in Indonesia for showing us their home and inspiring us with many examples of regenerative building projects and practices.

The meeting this year combined practical activities with theoretical input. The programme included a public conference, hands-on work with bamboo and mud, project-specific workshops, and site visits. Participants explored topics such as the challenges and opportunities associated with value chains in regenerative construction, building with bamboo, and sourcing natural and secondary materials. Overall, the workshop focused on the results of the ReBuilt project to date. Together, we reflected on the progress made in each region and compared learnings, finding many similarities and differences between the case studies. In the final days we developed future strategies and next steps for the project.

The main objectives of the workshop were to:

1. Understand and compare local and global perspectives;

2. Share strategies and experiences between regions;

3. Learn practical skills for building with bamboo;

4. Consolidate and ground the knowledge gathered in the project so far; and

5. Develop a roadmap and vision for the next year of the project.

Key takeaways

The ReBuilt Annual Meeting 2024 provided valuable insights into both the challenges and opportunities of implementing regenerative building practices in different regions. It highlighted the importance of continuing our collaborative work on regenerative building with our partners across diverse regions and disciplines. Participants — from researchers to non-profit workers to policy makers — learned from each other’s experiences and worked towards implementing regenerative strategies in their own local contexts. Everyone left with a shared commitment to apply the lessons learned in the coming years of our ReBuilt collaboration. Going forward, the focus will remain on developing strategies for scaling up regenerative practices and exploring their applicability in different settings.

We would like to thank all participants for their invaluable contributions! We were delighted to welcome representatives of diverse organizations including Cambridge Transformation Lab, Indobamboo, the German Federal Environment Agency, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Bamboo Village Trust, African Centre for Cities, Kota Kita, the Climate Smart Forest Economy Program, KaJa Design Associates, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport in Bhutan. We would especially like to thank our partners in Indonesia for kindly showing us their work and their home. The ReBuilt project will continue until the end of 2025, with another annual meeting planned for the autumn of next year. Read about last year’s annual meeting here.

ReBuilt is supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, and Consumer Protection (BMUV).