AccScience Publishing / JCAU / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/jcau.0862
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Energy manifesto: Principles for regenerative architecture, arts, and design

Rachel Armstrong1*
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1 Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Ghent, Brussels, Belgium
Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism 2023, 5(4), 0862 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0862
Submitted: 30 June 2023 | Accepted: 10 July 2023 | Published: 7 August 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Regenerative Architecture)
© 2023 by the Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided t. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

This viewpoint outlines the environmentally toxic view of energy that frames industrial modernism, which is fundamentally anti-life. An alternative, regenerative worldview is proposed, offering new ideals that are supposed to redesign the world by working in concert with the energies of the living world in ways that are fundamentally life-promoting. Centered on microbial metabolisms that form the living base of the biosphere, referred to as the microbial commons, the manifesto takes a decentralized approach to our engagement with energy so that diversity, resilience, and interdependence are valued through the commons of energies, which is powered by microbial metabolisms forming a substrate for regenerative design to enable the establishment of a vitalizing interspecies relationship with the earth, nature, and each other.

Keywords
Energy
Regenerative
Industrial
Commons of energies
Metabolism; Electrons
Funding
This work is funded by the European Union’s EIC Pathfinder Challenges Microbial Hydroponics project (Mi- Hy) Project 101114746, which is a collaboration between KU Leuven, the University of Southampton, SONY C.S.L., BioFaction, the Spanish National Research Council, and the University of the West of England, which brings together MFC technology and hydroponics for the 1st time, thereby introducing a prosthetic rhizosphere (an extended rhizosphere community) to the typically “soil-less” configuration of hydroponics systems. The Mi-Hy system processes different forms of nitrogen while the artificial microbiomes introduced to the plant roots will optimize nitrogen uptake and mobilize phosphorous, avoiding the need for chemical fertilizers. This circular, sustainable platform turns carbon into biomass and reclaims nitrogen from wastewater streams. The project is funded to the sum of 4,421,420.50 €.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that there are no competing interests.
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Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, Electronic ISSN: 2717-5626 Published by AccScience Publishing