Jennifer Cutbill on regenerative practice and capacity building

The architect Jennifer Cutbill is the founding Principal of Lateral Agency, a strategic regenerative development consultancy and a research and capacity-building platform. She is a fellow with the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada and leading their Climate Action Plan; she’s involved with Architects Declare and Architects Divest. Jenn shared her concept of regenerative practice (the paradigm shift from reducing harm to collaboratively evolving our collective capacity) and what she thinks young people should try to bring into this work today (curiosity and living systems thinking). Jenn’s PhD work is looking at critical infrastructure through a regenerative lens and aligning valuation metrics in a way that brings to bear a plurality of ways of knowing and being. These are the contexts in which architects, and the built environment community are working. Her goal, she says, is to “realize regenerative development by whatever name, building capacity together.”