Shaping What’s Next: Leadership for a Changing Built Environment

Towards leadership cultures that shape a built environment belonging to life.

Many organisations are bringing nature-positive and community-centred ideas into their work, yet the built environment remains entangled in extractive, business-as-usual patterns—where “sustainability” and “community engagement” are welcome steps, but not enough. As the next generation of leaders, we have the opportunity to reshape this future.

What might the built environment look like when we’re the ones guiding the vision and making the key choices?

TERRALUPA, together with FactoryX, NOUS Ecosistema, PlanIT, and guest collaborators, invites you to an evening of inquiry, exchange, and imagination—exploring how emerging and practicing leadership can shape the built environment through a whole-life-systems lens.

This launch gathering, Build What Belongs, marks Terralupa’s next chapter as a living systems collective—co-creating and supporting the shifts the built environment urgently needs.

The evening will feature contributions from:

• Carol Freitas (NOUS Ecosistema), who will weave perspectives from the Global South—sharing how the living intelligence of Brazil’s biomes can teach us about creativity, adaptation, and belonging, and how organisations can learn from ecosystems themselves to cultivate regenerative awareness.

• Jenny (Materials in Mind / FactoryX), who will share her view on current leadership cultures and the shift needed for truly circular, low-carbon practice—how leadership can create the right infrastructure for regenerative material flows.

• Aga, who will reflect on the changing role of architects in times of polycrisis, exploring how design leadership must evolve to empower climate-focused, data-informed, and socially conscious decisions, and how rethinking ownership of buildings and land can enable more equitable, life-centred living environments.

• Ben (PlanIT IE), who will share insights from the Regenerative Design Tool and how leadership is evolving within organisations ready to embed systems thinking in practice.

This is more than a talk or workshop—it’s a space to connect, reflect, and co-create pathways for the next generation of leadership in the built environment.

Schedule (subject to updates)
3:45–4:00 Arrival & Greeting
4:30 Terralupa Introduction
4:45 Guest Collaborators Sharing
5:15 Workshop & Discussion
6:30 Close & Networking (until 7pm, drinks and snacks included)

✅ This event counts as structured CPD for RIBA, CIAT, and related professional bodies, aligning with:

• Sustainability / Sustainable Architecture

• Leadership, Business & Professional Practice

• Inclusive Environments & Social Purpose

• Health, Wellbeing & Whole-systems Approaches

🎟️ Tickets include drinks and snacks.