Beyond Human Cities: Nature’s Voice At The Design Table

Date: 12th February 2025

Time: 5:30pm – 7:30pm AEST

Location: COX Architecture

How should design practice change in response to the biodiversity crisis? How do we give voice to the myriad of species which call our project place home?

‘Biodiversity inclusive design’ promises opportunities for built environment design disciplines to support local and global biodiversity conservation within urban areas. Yet biodiversity inclusivity is often elusive and difficult for practitioners to know where to start.

Join this special Melbourne Regenerative Design Forum for an exploration into this ever-evolving field that questions the narratives shared about urban places, our custodial role as built environment professionals and as humans within the ecosystem.

Dr Cristina Hernandez-Santin will present her PhD findings into ‘mainstream’ design practice to identify cultural barriers and enablers for biodiversity inclusivity. She’ll share opportunities to leverage change within our projects to deliver biodiversity inclusive design as well as potential avenues to create wider change together as an industry.

This session will be chaired by Dr Sarah Bekessy, avid advocate of design processes for biodiversity and one of the creators of the biodiversity sensitive urban design framework.

Speakers

Sarah Bekessy (chair)

Professor Sarah Bekessy leads the ICON Science research group (www.icon-science.org) which uses interdisciplinary approaches to solve complex biodiversity conservation problems. She is particularly interested in understanding the role of human behaviour in conservation, in designing cities to encourage ‘every day nature’ experiences and in defining and measuring ‘nature positive’ development. She co-developed the Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design protocol that has now been used by numerous developers, governments and non-government organisations to design innovative urban biodiversity strategies.

Cristina Hernandez-Santin

Cristina is an ecologist, biodiversity inclusive designer and placemaker who seeks to translate ecological knowledge to support ‘place’ for both humans and non-humans to coexist. She aspires to merge the idea of participatory design with ecology to give voice to non-human stakeholders and incorporating their needs into the design process and its outcomes. With a background in ecology (B.Biology, University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico) and sustainable design (MEnv. The University of Melbourne), she has recently completed her PhD on Biodiversity Inclusive Design (RMIT University) and is working at Village Well bringing her research to practice though regenerative placemaking.

This is an event by The Melbourne Regenerative Design Forum.