Impact by Design
In a world facing unprecedented environmental and social challenges, the built environment stands at a critical crossroads. The design decisions we make today will shape the resilience of our communities for generations to come.
Impact by Design represents Hassell’s commitment to measuring, understanding and improving the environmental and social consequences of our work across architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and urban design.
We live in a rapidly changing world where inequality, climate change, urbanisation and digitisation present new challenges and opportunities, increasing the value of design. The need to contribute to a beautiful, resilient and inclusive future is now more urgent than ever.
That’s why in March 2023, we revised our purpose to better reflect the context in which we operate as designers. We are now guided by the purpose to create a better future by designing the world’s best places — places people love.
To deliver on our purpose and address the diverse range of challenges society is facing, we needed a holistic framework that would guide our design responses in a balanced way. Our Sustainability Framework does just that, setting out the basis for our sustainable and regenerative design approach across four key areas of focus — Place, Carbon, Social, Systems. Our Framework includes 12 principles that guide us in understanding the social, economic, ecological, climatic and cultural systems we exist within. These principles also shape how we contribute to the long-term legacy of the places we create
The targets within our Sustainability Framework set out our ambition and what we will achieve, in three clear stages of evolution:
- Setting ourselves up for success.
- All projects and all people integrating our framework by 2025.
- Our regenerative approach being business as usual by 2030.
Since we revised our purpose and launched our Sustainability Framework, we’ve achieved great success, and navigated moments that required us to reflect and learn. While we discuss our wins and challenges across our practice, we recognise the need to share our progress with our clients, collaborators, and partners.
Impact by Design responds to this need. As our inaugural report communicating our holistic impact as designers, and how we’re walking the talk across our eight studios. Impact by Design sets out our progress in implementing the Sustainability Framework in our projects and our practice. It’s the first periodic snapshot of our impact as an international design studio.
This, our first Impact by Design report focuses on our achievements during the 2025 financial year (1 July 2024 - 30 June 2025). It highlights how we’ve made a start embedding regenerative design principles in all our work, how we continue to develop our approach for Country-centred design, and how we sought to validate our purpose and our impact by becoming a Certified B Corp.
This report also provides insight into our progress across the four areas of our Framework — Place, Carbon, Social, Systems — sharing our stories and our collective impact across our portfolio.
“Meaningful change requires honest reflection. By openly sharing our successes, failures and challenges, we hope to contribute to a culture of transparency that drives collective improvement across our industry. We cannot address what we do not measure, and we cannot improve what we do not acknowledge.”
Liz Westgarth, Managing Director, Hassell
