On May 7-9th our President Carlo Battisti represented Living Future Europe in Atlanta at the 18th annual Living Future Conference. Living Future 2024 brought together a dynamic community of practitioners, advocates, and allies tackling the most pressing challenges at the intersection of climate, health, and equity.
This was a great chance for us to meet like-minded professionals aiming to a regenerative future and listen from their stories of impact and innovation. The Living Future Conference is ILFI’s annual flagship event that showcases leadership and solutions, inspires action, and builds a networked community to advance the regenerative movement. Each year, the programming explores the urgent issues that we face at the intersection of climate, health, and equity in the built environment.
The three days program was structure into the following categories:
- Discovering Living Future Programs and Project
- Change Starts Here
- Illuminating an Equitable Future
- Innovation Showcase
- Revolutionizing Climate Action
- The Nexus of Human and Ecological Health
As every year (Carlo’s first participation to Living Future dates back to May 20-24th, 2014, in Portland) LF provide a number of valuable insights, sessions, talks and conversations that are full of inspiration. Here are Carlo’s five main takeaways from the event. Reach out to us if you have any questions, and save a spot in your Calendar for LF25, again in Portland, Oregon!
- It takes a village to raise a Living Building
The tour of the Georgia Tech University newly certified Living Building Challenge project provided tons of great information and brilliant regenerative solutions. The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design is the first building in Georgia and 28th in the world to earn LBC certification. It fosters regenerative and restorative relationships amongst humans and nature where people give back more to the environment than they take. Enjoy a tour of the building in this video, while here you may find a comprehensive explanation of the amazing building features.
- Ripples of Living Buildings
This session was one of the highlights of LF24 and featured four LBC iconic certified projects, with the designers who took part in the design and construction transparently explaining what worked well and which were, instead, some challenging situations. “This session is about failure” Paul Schwer from PAE said, and this is totally in the spirit of innovation. Achieving an LBC is not easy (thus the ‘challenge’ in the title) but project after project a new community of professionals is demonstrating that a regenerative approach is feasible and makes a lot of sense.
- Nature is circular
The modern economy is linear, but nature has no such concept of waste and trash – material is constantly cycled through the system, being remade and reabsorbed into new bodies and outlets over and over. This was the underlying principle behind a great workshop organised by Interface. Based in Atlanta, Interface is a global player for commercial carpet tile and hard surface flooring. The visionary ideas of Ray C. Anderson (1934-2011) where beautifully explained in the documentary ‘Beyond Zero’ (2022) available on Delta flights. Carlo completed this Interface journey by enjoying a private tour of the Interface Global Headquarters building in Atlanta.
- The new era of transparency for equitable enterprises
LF24 also celebrated the official launch of Just 3.0, a groundbreaking leap forward in the pursuit of equity and justice within organizations. The new version of Just – which Living Future Europe has contributed to review, providing a European perspective on best practices and regulations – is the most advanced iteration of ILFI’s acclaimed social justice label and transparency platform.
- The FutureFlow requires a more holistic and competent approach than ever
One of the novelties of this edition of LF was the FutureFlow program. Divided in two parts and moderated by the editor-in-chief of Metropolis, this flowing series of short keynote speeches gave us a clear sense of how the global issues (environmental, social, economic) require from us the capacity to address such a dynamic and continuously evolving scenario with competence, flexibility and bright vision. We listen on so many urgent topics, let’s to try to list some keywords: rating systems, codes, standards, impact of design on human health and perception, integrated material life cycle design, community wellbeing, buildings, public health, climate change, building materials, embodied carbon, placemaking, urban sustainability, city resilience, real estate, economic development.
