All projects, all people, now

Regeneration isn’t a separate stream of work — it shapes how we design. 

Our regenerative design process is guided by our Sustainability Framework – not as a checklist or a rigid formula, but as a tool for thinking. It helps us take a systems view, map relationships and understand the evolving context of a project – social, ecological, cultural and economic. Before we begin designing, we’re focused on aligning purpose, place and value.

This isn’t about applying all 12 sustainability principles to every project. It’s not about enforcing outcomes. It’s about using a shared process to explore what regeneration could look like in each specific context – and translating that into design outcomes that deliver more than they take and provide far greater value to users and stakeholders.

By integrating a regenerative approach into the core of our design process, we’re building a consistent way of working across all our studios – one that responds to complexity, supports better decision-making, and leads to outcomes with lasting impact. 

In FY25, we ran workshops with project teams in each studio to embed regenerative design principles from the very beginning of each project, recognising that this is where the greatest opportunities for impact exist.

Our workshops marked the first step in our commitment to embedding regenerative design across all projects and all people at Hassell. To date, we’ve engaged 134 projects in a deeper exploration of how context, purpose and value intersect – helping us deliver more meaningful outcomes for our clients, the communities we serve, and the environments we design within. During FY25, a total of 76 of our active projects were engaged in this process. 

“A regenerative design approach challenges us to be brave. It underpins everything we do.” 

(Attribution TBC)