Energy manifesto: Principles for regenerative architecture, arts, and design

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.