REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy
COST Action CA16114 RESTORE (2017-2021)
Sustainable buildings and facilities are critical to a future that is socially just, ecologically restorative,
culturally rich, and economically viable within the climate change context. Despite over a decade of
strategies and programmes, progress on built environment sustainability fails to address these key issues.
Consequently, the built environment sector no longer has the luxury of being incrementally less bad, but,
with urgency, needs to adopt net-positive, restorative sustainability thinking to incrementally do ‘more good’.
Within the built environment sustainability agenda a shift is occurring, from a narrow focus on building energy
performance, mitigation strategies, and minimisation of environmental impacts to a broader framework that
enriches places, people, ecology, culture, and climate at the core of the design task, with a particular
emphasis on the salutogenic benefits towards health. Sustainability in buildings, as understood today, is an
inadequate measure for current and future architectural design, for it aims no higher than trying to make
buildings “less bad”. Building on current European Standards restorative sustainability approaches can and
will raise aspirations and deliver restorative outcomes.
The RESTORE Action affects a paradigm shift towards restorative sustainability for new and existing
buildings across Europe, promoting forward thinking and multidisciplinary knowledge, leading to solutions
that celebrate the richness of design creativity while enhancing users’ experience, comfort, health, wellbeing,
and satisfaction inside and outside buildings, and in harmony with urban and natural ecosystems,
reconnecting users to nature.
The RESTORE Action advocates, mentors, and influences for a restorative built environment sustainability
through working groups, training schools (including learning design competitions) and Short Term Scientific
Missions (STSMs). Also, in order to facilitate communication and dissemination of results, our Action offers
conference grants and open access publication grants.
