[CONFERENCE] Dror Benshetrit : Bioplanning as a Discipline, a Paradigm for Urban Design

Supernature Labs explores a new design methodology in urban planning and design, “Bioplanning,” which translates contemporary urbanism, emphasizing ecology and landscape, into imperatives for circular city development models as an extension of the existing central city, or a sustainable ground-up in a green field context.

We currently use up to 50% of our natural resources to build cities that become urban sprawls, degrade our health and quality of life, and generate increasing social alienation, loss of biodiversity, resource scarcity, and economic inequality. It is projected that by 2040, we will double our urban land coverage, and by 2060, we will double our built environment. We must move towards a new nature-inspired model, reinvigorating existing urban centres, allowing cities to expand in harmony with principles of circularity and regeneration, and designing for all life.

With the participation of subject matter experts in Infrastructure, Human Behaviour, Mobility, Construction Efficiency, Biodiversity, Community, Energy, Environmental Resilience, Climate Resilience, Design, and Anthropology, the studio will investigate key extensive frameworks of Bioplanning, such as:

Refers to a shift from conventional urban grids to an organic and adaptive urban strategy. Bioplanning seeks to refine quantitative urban variables and examine their relationships.

The systems of contemporary urbanism are complicit in the active destruction of local ecosystems and the degradation of mental health, physical well-being, and safety. How can we develop design solutions for a self-sufficient city that actively enhances local ecosystems and promotes conditions conducive to all life?

A modular and regenerative model for a mixed-use neighbourhood designed with nature and community at its centre as a node in a network of surrounding ecosystems.

Bill Reed will explore the dynamic relationship between human and ecological systems and learn why regenerative development is gaining traction worldwide as a viable solution to major global issues. Such initiatives include the Commonwealth’s Regenerative Development to Reverse Climate Change, which aims to establish regenerative carbon-capture strategies and whole system health within a group of nations that comprise one third of the world’s population.

This conference will examine the distinguishing principles of regenerative development in relation to living systems. Practitioners who are interested in moving beyond sustainability simply as a damage-mitigation method will benefit from this presentation.

Dror Benshetrit
Founder & Principal of Studio Dror & Supernature Labs

Founder of Studio Dror and Supernature Labs, Dror is a designer, thinker, inventor, and futurist whose ingenuity informs a striking range of impactful, unconventional work. Dror has an award-winning 20+ year career in product design, interiors, architecture, master planning, and city planning. His eponymous NY studio collaborated with top-tier companies and developers around the world, envisioning, researching and developing systems to connect people with nature through the built environment. Dror aims to foster authentic connections and improve people’s well-being with these designs. Some of Dror’s major works include a novel structural support system named Quadror, the master plan of Galataport in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Cappellini Peacock chair.

The approach challenges development to think in terms of multiple scales and generational thinking towards a holistic approach to technology, material science, manufacturing, city infrastructure, inclusive socioeconomics, regenerative environmental strategies, and governance frameworks to envision completely novel paradigms for future cities scenarios and their functions for humanity.

Bioplanning will play a pivotal part in a line of research and publication of Supernature Labs and be highly encouraged to trigger discussions of the historical formation of existing cities and visions for codifying future city design imperatives.