Bioplanning a greener future/Dror Benshetrit
Urban planning is a negotiation between the bold dreams of the built environment and the delicate balance of the natural one. Urban growth is exploding: by 2060, the global building footprint is projected to double. But instead of wreaking havoc on biodiversity with every new development, interdisciplinary artist Dror Benshetrit of Supernature Labs has a greener idea: bioplanning. An approach rooted in nature, bioplanning is the idea that maybe humans don’t have it all figured out. It’s the concept that Mother Nature is a brilliant urban planner and she’s happy to share the IP when it comes to efficiency and conservation. So, who are the brave souls ready and willing to take one big leaf forward?
Jen Hancock:
Since the Industrial Revolution, urban planning and ecology haven’t always seen eye to eye. They don’t call it the Anthropocene for nothing. Humans love to DIY the planet. And if Earth was a rental unit, we would not be getting our deposit back.
We build in locations that prioritize human land use—putting convenience before conservation. Sometimes that stubbornness leads to calamity and destruction—like when we ignore flood plains or suppress wildfires.
Incorporating green space often becomes a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have.
But we have a limited amount of time to make sure everyone gets what they want. By 2060, the area of land occupied by buildings is projected to double, which means that urban planners and ecologists are going to have to do a lot more than compromise. They’re going to have to choose to work together. And that means pivoting.
So why not pivot to bioplanning?
This is Building Good. I’m Jen Hancock.
[silence]
Jen Hancock:
Bioplanning is the idea that urban planners and ecologists don’t have to feel like unwilling partners on a group project. It’s the idea that just maybe humans don’t have it all figured out, and maybe nature has a few things to teach us.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
It’s about shattering the idea of what a building looks like. It’s about rethinking what cities should be built in spite of.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
It’s about destroying as little as possible, instead of dominating the plants and animals around us.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
It’s about harnessing the knowledge and experience of both worlds: the built environment and the natural one.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
Today on Building Good: an interdisciplinary artist sketching out a bold new future.
[music]
Dror Benshetrit:
I’m Dror Benshetrit. I’m a designer, inventor, futurist, working on Supernature Labs in The Bioplanning Institute, based in New York.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
Over the last two decades, Dror’s career has incorporated product design, interiors, architecture, master planning, and city planning.
Dror Benshetrit:
My background is in art, but I studied product design. Architecture at first was quite intimidating for me, because I’m not an architect by training. Then, I fell in love with working on those large-scale projects that brought me into more of an urban-planning direction.
Jen Hancock:
In 2018, he founded Supernature Labs, a regenerative-tech company on a mission to stop urban sprawl by building communities that live harmoniously with nature.
Dror Benshetrit:
I started to develop a fascination to rethinking, holistically, the built environment. It came out of necessity to think differently about some of the most pressing challenges that we have that designers, architects, planners, and others can contribute to.
Jen Hancock:
Supernature Labs draws inspiration from the natural world—like taking cues from how cells grow in optimizing road infrastructure.
Dror Benshetrit:
So actually, with certain proportions you can reduce road and road infrastructure quite drastically.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
They established The Bioplanning Institute as a non-profit dedicated to advancing a new way of thinking about urban planning—one that makes treetops top of mind.
[music]
Dror Benshetrit:
We needed a separate non-for-profit research organization from Supernature Labs that initially wants to work with development entities to create projects in the real world.
Jen Hancock:
But of course, thinking big can mean ruffling some feathers along the way.
Dror Benshetrit:
There’s obviously a lot of skepticism. It’s also intimidating, because it’s trying to address multiple problems at once, rather than what we typically do is fragment our needs and our issues and address each one of them separately, which I strongly believe is a mistake sometimes.
Jen Hancock:
So, what was the first step on Dror’s journey to the Emerald City?
Dror Benshetrit:
Right before I turned 40—which I think is for most of us a time of reflection in our life, where we think, you know, “What have I accomplished so far?”—I realized that almost all of the projects that we have been incubating under Studio Dror were my personal interest and passion. Right? Like things that I said, “Hey!” Like we’ve done, you know, shoes for Puma, and luggage for Tumi.
And I think that at that point I asked myself, “Well, maybe I should stop thinking, ‘What is it that I want to do?’ and actually think, ‘What does the world need the most?’ or ‘What does the world need the most from me?’” And actually, the answer flew right out.
So, really thinking about urbanism holistically, that is what the world needs the most today. For a couple of different reasons. One: the enormous scale of urban expansion that we are experiencing, and about to experience over the next couple decades. We are doubling the land coverage of cities in our lifetime, somewhere between the next 25 to 30 years. And we’re doubling the volumetric mass that we’ve ever built as humans, also in the next 35 to 40 years or so.
And that’s just crazy. That’s just so hard to comprehend. We are suffering from the same urban challenges, no matter whether we are in New York, L.A., Miami, or, you know, Hong Kong, and so forth. Of course, variations of cultural nuances, various densities, and so forth, but still: noise, pollution, traffic, and so forth.
And then, while diving into understanding ecological practices, and permaculture methods, and really understanding nature, we often look at our immediate historical references from the last, you know, several years and we neglect that nature has, you know, over four billion years of evolution that we have so much to learn from.
Jen Hancock:
In a nutshell. (laughs a little)
Dror Benshetrit:
(laughs a little)
Jen Hancock:
Easier said than done. Right?
Dror Benshetrit:
(laughs a little)
Jen Hancock:
So, bioplanning. You mentioned bioplanning. What is it? And how is this discipline different from other types of urban planning, and from other types of green design?
Dror Benshetrit:
Well actually, let me start by saying that a couple years back, when we started using the term “bioplanning,” a very dear friend and a collaborator with—ah, of Supernature said, “Dror, bioplanning is a discipline.” And I went home thinking, “What does that actually mean—to create a discipline?” Right? Like we referred to it as, “Well, these are the principles of bioplanning, these are the imperatives of bioplanning.” But what does “discipline” actually mean?
And I think it’s important to also realize that obviously many, many, many people have experimented, and still are experimenting, with all kinds of ecological practice for urban development. And we sit on shoulders of giants in terms of really understanding certain permaculture practices, and ecological practices, and certain contributions for flora and fauna, and many, many, many things that relate specifically to that effort.
But for me the most important aspect about bioplanning is that it's a shift from what we consider as the Cartesianal logic that has been guiding us all along. When you have only the ability to draw plans in sections and elevations with rulers and pencils, up until, you know, 25, 30 years ago, you can’t really communicate forms that are more complex. With technology, with the capability of massive amount of data computation, you can really start to mimic nature-based formation and other complex, you know, forms that get us out of the traditional Cartesianal logic. Right? Like until now, everything has always been 90 degrees.
And we still, by the way, you know, there’s of course certain things that we still are more affordable and simpler by using linear logic, but that’s changing rapidly. And of course, you know, when you talk about cost, and cost efficiency, and time frame, it’s not just that we are already proving that actually cellular logic particularly could be faster to build and more cost-effective, but you also start to realize that there is all of those added benefits that have very challenging aspects of measurement. Right?
Like how do we measure the need for more empathetic communities? And how do you measure, you know, a sense of belonging? And how do you measure like the value of your community? Quite tough, you know, things to specifically point their value.
Jen Hancock:
You mentioned empathetic communities. How would you define that?
Dror Benshetrit:
Oof. I’ve been questioning, often, “How come the denser we live, the more lonely we feel?” Loneliness, suicidal issues have never been so high. I mean, we obviously blame technology. Right? Like we say, “Oh, of course, we all have a phone between us; and we don’t interact with one another.” And I think that the built environment itself can create a more empathetic society that creates an integration between people and encourages the type of serendipity that we expect from cities and places.
How do we do that? We put that in our consciousness when we design. Right? I always think of people that are going to, ah, let’s say, a wedding planner or a wedding designer. And the wedding planner sits with them and say, “Okay. What kind of wedding would you like to have? What’s important for you?” The flowers, the music. You get these kind of sets of priorities based on the type of experience that you want to create.
But often when you think of those urban challenges, you’re not always thinking about the experiences that you’re trying to promote; you’re thinking of practical terms, and turning radiuses for the truck, and all kinds of things that are extremely important but they’re not necessarily taking into consideration the experiential aspect. What will happen if the mandate in this particular brief would be, “create an urban environment that is the most empathetic, that creates conditions for love as the highest aspirational goal”? I’m sure that, without any specific guidance, and guidelines, and principles, those environments are going to be much more interesting.
Jen Hancock:
What parts of the natural environment do you take inspiration from when you’re looking at the bioplanning method?
Dror Benshetrit:
It all started with a very, very naïve exploration. We basically said, “Wait a second. If you look at nature’s formation, you find cellular aggregation almost everywhere. Like if everything in nature is organized as cell formation, could we explore an urban environment that is shaped like that as well?”
And from that point on, it’s been six years of collecting enormous amount of data, enormous amount of benefits, to the point we’re like, “Wait a second. There are laundry lists of benefits here. We’ve explored variety of cell aggregations in various forms, in various proportions. Are there nature-based geometries that are either born out of that logic, or have a similar logic, that we should explore? Cell aggregation can really inspire us for different things.
For instance, when you look at the surface area of a hexagonal form, or other similar cellular shapes, compared to a square and—and various rectangular forms, you realize that there is a massive increase to the surface area in comparison to the overall space around it. So actually, with certain proportions you can reduce road and road infrastructure quite drastically. Which have a massive ripple effect on cost efficiency, in terms of infrastructure, traffic flow, and so forth.
Jen Hancock:
What are also the benefits, then, of considering a zone’s natural surroundings when developing it? So like looking at a space specifically, how do you kind of integrate those two things?
Dror Benshetrit:
So, first of all, when we’re talking about ecological urban environment, we have to understand that the initial starting point is understanding the natural environment, and not just applying your urban needs onto a space.
And what does that mean? I mean, if you’re working within a rich biodiversity and a very thriving ecosystem, then the goal is: how can I minimize the impact of my urban intervention over here?
And second, what are the specific nodes within a given area that we need to preserve, that we must protect?
For instance: the oldest tree in the area that you’re working with. Right? You want to make sure that the road doesn’t cut it, and uproot it, and kill it, or move it somewhere else but actually preserve its node. Or waterway path. Or specific bird migration or bird nesting. And so forth.
So really identifying those nodes and kind of realizing that those are potentially centre of communities. If we’re saying life-centred design is focusing on life first and human after, then humans are kind of the urban cells that are creating those natural nodes.
And sometimes you have the exact opposite, like things that you need to avoid. A highway. A cliff. A change, a drastic change in—in topography. And things like this that really are creating certain limitations.
And there’s a lot of nuances. And one of the key aspects that The Bioplanning Institute wants to work on is create various programs of talent activation. Which means that enlarge the pool of players that can explore those directions with us.
Jen Hancock:
So, a little bit of what I heard in that also is the—the idea that you can come up with a bit of a methodology but it can’t be so rigid that it doesn’t adapt to different situations. It’s actually one of the challenges, I think, with the built environment—building and design in general—is that it’s a great thing but also a challenge in that we have a lot of variation in the projects we work on. Which means getting consistency in high-quality buildings can be difficult from project to project with the—all the nuances, as you mention. Do you think the idea of using sort of cellular design—which, I mean, they sort of replicate—what do you think about there’s variation but you might actually be able to knock some of that variation a little bit out using your design process and therefore get more consistent buildings and built form that fits in with the environment better? Maybe takes a little bit of that variation piece out, which is also a cost challenge, as well, in industry.
Dror Benshetrit:
Yeah, absolutely. We all know that the process of creating those complex built environments are extremely time-consuming and take years. We want to let many urban planners and architects experiment with some of the directions that we’ve created—and keep it, you know, for the first few years very loose. When we actually build those projects and actually measure the results, we might be surprised. Right?
Every time we create something innovative that is intending to solve some particular problem, you create other problems that need some addressing.
Jen Hancock:
And so early days, obviously, in this. But what kind of reception have you seen from, like, finished or in-progress designs developed so far? What’s the reception been?
Dror Benshetrit:
There is all kinds of reception. Many people are, obviously, very excited and want to see this in the real world, and kind of always asking like, “Well, how far are we from finished projects that we can actually visit and experience?”
You know, there’s obviously a lot of skepticism around certain things. And the people that are just unable to get out of their linear mindsets to think.
And it’s also intimidating a lot of people. Right? Like it’s intimating a lot of people because it’s comprehensive. It’s really kind of trying to address multiple problems at once, rather than what we typically do is fragment our needs and our issues and address each one of them separately.
I’m so grateful for the insane amount of support that we’re getting from people that are really, really excited and understanding not just the complexity but also the incredible urgency to—to think differently. Right?
One prototype of this kind of environment can take 10, 15 years. If we need to wait that long in order for other people to adopt it, we’ve already lost, you know, 75 per cent of the future urban expansion that we’re expecting. So we have to prototype. We have to find proper funding for scientific validations. We have to really explore and experiment. And it requires massive amount of buy-in from municipalities, from construction companies, from developers.
Jen Hancock:
Complex, urgent, all of that.
Dror Benshetrit:
(laughs)
Jen Hancock:
Yeah.
Do you take other forms of sustainable development concepts—like 15-minute cities, net-zero living—how do you kind of integrate that in with your bioplanning method?
Dror Benshetrit:
Actually, it’s funny, I’m giving a talk with Carlos Moreno here in New York—the guy who created the—the 15-minute city concept. And it’s funny because on one of my first conversations with Carlos, I said, “You know, the whole premise of the 15-minute city is radial logic; and bioplanning essentially is taking that same logic but breaking it into multiple frames of scale. So you can actually think of the 3-minute city, and the 5-minute city, and the 7-minute city.” And Carlos was very excited about that exploration.
That’s just one but there’s many explorations that we’ve adapted certain things from, and many things that we are planning to adapt but kind of pushing it a little bit further.
I have also a huge obsession with the use of regenerative material. But there’s many areas around the world where you don’t have access and ability to create with truly regenerative materials. So we start with your geometrical shift, and then evolve to encourage other players to participate and explore or bring various materials to certain places.
One of the things, for instance, that I’m really obsessed with right now is certain permaculture practices on the land that needs to later on be developed for urban development. Which is very unusual. Right? Like you always think of development land as like, “Okay, we come in, we clear everything, and it becomes a construction site for the next, you know, five years, and then you bring some nature back.” But for us it’s quite the opposite. Like if the development takes seven years, the maturity of vegetation in seven years is insane, so why not start day one and work around it?
[music]
Jen Hancock:
We’ll be back with Dror and his green dreams after this.
Jen Hancock:
Since the Industrial Revolution, urban planning and ecology haven’t always seen eye to eye. They don’t call it the Anthropocene for nothing. Humans love to DIY the planet. And if Earth was a rental unit, we would not be getting our deposit back.
We build in locations that prioritize human land use—putting convenience before conservation. Sometimes that stubbornness leads to calamity and destruction—like when we ignore flood plains or suppress wildfires.
Incorporating green space often becomes a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have.
But we have a limited amount of time to make sure everyone gets what they want. By 2060, the area of land occupied by buildings is projected to double, which means that urban planners and ecologists are going to have to do a lot more than compromise. They’re going to have to choose to work together. And that means pivoting.
So why not pivot to bioplanning?
This is Building Good. I’m Jen Hancock.
[silence]
Jen Hancock:
Bioplanning is the idea that urban planners and ecologists don’t have to feel like unwilling partners on a group project. It’s the idea that just maybe humans don’t have it all figured out, and maybe nature has a few things to teach us.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
It’s about shattering the idea of what a building looks like. It’s about rethinking what cities should be built in spite of.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
It’s about destroying as little as possible, instead of dominating the plants and animals around us.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
It’s about harnessing the knowledge and experience of both worlds: the built environment and the natural one.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
Today on Building Good: an interdisciplinary artist sketching out a bold new future.
[music]
Dror Benshetrit:
I’m Dror Benshetrit. I’m a designer, inventor, futurist, working on Supernature Labs in The Bioplanning Institute, based in New York.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
Over the last two decades, Dror’s career has incorporated product design, interiors, architecture, master planning, and city planning.
Dror Benshetrit:
My background is in art, but I studied product design. Architecture at first was quite intimidating for me, because I’m not an architect by training. Then, I fell in love with working on those large-scale projects that brought me into more of an urban-planning direction.
Jen Hancock:
In 2018, he founded Supernature Labs, a regenerative-tech company on a mission to stop urban sprawl by building communities that live harmoniously with nature.
Dror Benshetrit:
I started to develop a fascination to rethinking, holistically, the built environment. It came out of necessity to think differently about some of the most pressing challenges that we have that designers, architects, planners, and others can contribute to.
Jen Hancock:
Supernature Labs draws inspiration from the natural world—like taking cues from how cells grow in optimizing road infrastructure.
Dror Benshetrit:
So actually, with certain proportions you can reduce road and road infrastructure quite drastically.
[music]
Jen Hancock:
They established The Bioplanning Institute as a non-profit dedicated to advancing a new way of thinking about urban planning—one that makes treetops top of mind.
[music]
Dror Benshetrit:
We needed a separate non-for-profit research organization from Supernature Labs that initially wants to work with development entities to create projects in the real world.
Jen Hancock:
But of course, thinking big can mean ruffling some feathers along the way.
Dror Benshetrit:
There’s obviously a lot of skepticism. It’s also intimidating, because it’s trying to address multiple problems at once, rather than what we typically do is fragment our needs and our issues and address each one of them separately, which I strongly believe is a mistake sometimes.
Jen Hancock:
So, what was the first step on Dror’s journey to the Emerald City?
Dror Benshetrit:
Right before I turned 40—which I think is for most of us a time of reflection in our life, where we think, you know, “What have I accomplished so far?”—I realized that almost all of the projects that we have been incubating under Studio Dror were my personal interest and passion. Right? Like things that I said, “Hey!” Like we’ve done, you know, shoes for Puma, and luggage for Tumi.
And I think that at that point I asked myself, “Well, maybe I should stop thinking, ‘What is it that I want to do?’ and actually think, ‘What does the world need the most?’ or ‘What does the world need the most from me?’” And actually, the answer flew right out.
So, really thinking about urbanism holistically, that is what the world needs the most today. For a couple of different reasons. One: the enormous scale of urban expansion that we are experiencing, and about to experience over the next couple decades. We are doubling the land coverage of cities in our lifetime, somewhere between the next 25 to 30 years. And we’re doubling the volumetric mass that we’ve ever built as humans, also in the next 35 to 40 years or so.
And that’s just crazy. That’s just so hard to comprehend. We are suffering from the same urban challenges, no matter whether we are in New York, L.A., Miami, or, you know, Hong Kong, and so forth. Of course, variations of cultural nuances, various densities, and so forth, but still: noise, pollution, traffic, and so forth.
And then, while diving into understanding ecological practices, and permaculture methods, and really understanding nature, we often look at our immediate historical references from the last, you know, several years and we neglect that nature has, you know, over four billion years of evolution that we have so much to learn from.
Jen Hancock:
In a nutshell. (laughs a little)
Dror Benshetrit:
(laughs a little)
Jen Hancock:
Easier said than done. Right?
Dror Benshetrit:
(laughs a little)
Jen Hancock:
So, bioplanning. You mentioned bioplanning. What is it? And how is this discipline different from other types of urban planning, and from other types of green design?
Dror Benshetrit:
Well actually, let me start by saying that a couple years back, when we started using the term “bioplanning,” a very dear friend and a collaborator with—ah, of Supernature said, “Dror, bioplanning is a discipline.” And I went home thinking, “What does that actually mean—to create a discipline?” Right? Like we referred to it as, “Well, these are the principles of bioplanning, these are the imperatives of bioplanning.” But what does “discipline” actually mean?
And I think it’s important to also realize that obviously many, many, many people have experimented, and still are experimenting, with all kinds of ecological practice for urban development. And we sit on shoulders of giants in terms of really understanding certain permaculture practices, and ecological practices, and certain contributions for flora and fauna, and many, many, many things that relate specifically to that effort.
But for me the most important aspect about bioplanning is that it's a shift from what we consider as the Cartesianal logic that has been guiding us all along. When you have only the ability to draw plans in sections and elevations with rulers and pencils, up until, you know, 25, 30 years ago, you can’t really communicate forms that are more complex. With technology, with the capability of massive amount of data computation, you can really start to mimic nature-based formation and other complex, you know, forms that get us out of the traditional Cartesianal logic. Right? Like until now, everything has always been 90 degrees.
And we still, by the way, you know, there’s of course certain things that we still are more affordable and simpler by using linear logic, but that’s changing rapidly. And of course, you know, when you talk about cost, and cost efficiency, and time frame, it’s not just that we are already proving that actually cellular logic particularly could be faster to build and more cost-effective, but you also start to realize that there is all of those added benefits that have very challenging aspects of measurement. Right?
Like how do we measure the need for more empathetic communities? And how do you measure, you know, a sense of belonging? And how do you measure like the value of your community? Quite tough, you know, things to specifically point their value.
Jen Hancock:
You mentioned empathetic communities. How would you define that?
Dror Benshetrit:
Oof. I’ve been questioning, often, “How come the denser we live, the more lonely we feel?” Loneliness, suicidal issues have never been so high. I mean, we obviously blame technology. Right? Like we say, “Oh, of course, we all have a phone between us; and we don’t interact with one another.” And I think that the built environment itself can create a more empathetic society that creates an integration between people and encourages the type of serendipity that we expect from cities and places.
How do we do that? We put that in our consciousness when we design. Right? I always think of people that are going to, ah, let’s say, a wedding planner or a wedding designer. And the wedding planner sits with them and say, “Okay. What kind of wedding would you like to have? What’s important for you?” The flowers, the music. You get these kind of sets of priorities based on the type of experience that you want to create.
But often when you think of those urban challenges, you’re not always thinking about the experiences that you’re trying to promote; you’re thinking of practical terms, and turning radiuses for the truck, and all kinds of things that are extremely important but they’re not necessarily taking into consideration the experiential aspect. What will happen if the mandate in this particular brief would be, “create an urban environment that is the most empathetic, that creates conditions for love as the highest aspirational goal”? I’m sure that, without any specific guidance, and guidelines, and principles, those environments are going to be much more interesting.
Jen Hancock:
What parts of the natural environment do you take inspiration from when you’re looking at the bioplanning method?
Dror Benshetrit:
It all started with a very, very naïve exploration. We basically said, “Wait a second. If you look at nature’s formation, you find cellular aggregation almost everywhere. Like if everything in nature is organized as cell formation, could we explore an urban environment that is shaped like that as well?”
And from that point on, it’s been six years of collecting enormous amount of data, enormous amount of benefits, to the point we’re like, “Wait a second. There are laundry lists of benefits here. We’ve explored variety of cell aggregations in various forms, in various proportions. Are there nature-based geometries that are either born out of that logic, or have a similar logic, that we should explore? Cell aggregation can really inspire us for different things.
For instance, when you look at the surface area of a hexagonal form, or other similar cellular shapes, compared to a square and—and various rectangular forms, you realize that there is a massive increase to the surface area in comparison to the overall space around it. So actually, with certain proportions you can reduce road and road infrastructure quite drastically. Which have a massive ripple effect on cost efficiency, in terms of infrastructure, traffic flow, and so forth.
Jen Hancock:
What are also the benefits, then, of considering a zone’s natural surroundings when developing it? So like looking at a space specifically, how do you kind of integrate those two things?
Dror Benshetrit:
So, first of all, when we’re talking about ecological urban environment, we have to understand that the initial starting point is understanding the natural environment, and not just applying your urban needs onto a space.
And what does that mean? I mean, if you’re working within a rich biodiversity and a very thriving ecosystem, then the goal is: how can I minimize the impact of my urban intervention over here?
And second, what are the specific nodes within a given area that we need to preserve, that we must protect?
For instance: the oldest tree in the area that you’re working with. Right? You want to make sure that the road doesn’t cut it, and uproot it, and kill it, or move it somewhere else but actually preserve its node. Or waterway path. Or specific bird migration or bird nesting. And so forth.
So really identifying those nodes and kind of realizing that those are potentially centre of communities. If we’re saying life-centred design is focusing on life first and human after, then humans are kind of the urban cells that are creating those natural nodes.
And sometimes you have the exact opposite, like things that you need to avoid. A highway. A cliff. A change, a drastic change in—in topography. And things like this that really are creating certain limitations.
And there’s a lot of nuances. And one of the key aspects that The Bioplanning Institute wants to work on is create various programs of talent activation. Which means that enlarge the pool of players that can explore those directions with us.
Jen Hancock:
So, a little bit of what I heard in that also is the—the idea that you can come up with a bit of a methodology but it can’t be so rigid that it doesn’t adapt to different situations. It’s actually one of the challenges, I think, with the built environment—building and design in general—is that it’s a great thing but also a challenge in that we have a lot of variation in the projects we work on. Which means getting consistency in high-quality buildings can be difficult from project to project with the—all the nuances, as you mention. Do you think the idea of using sort of cellular design—which, I mean, they sort of replicate—what do you think about there’s variation but you might actually be able to knock some of that variation a little bit out using your design process and therefore get more consistent buildings and built form that fits in with the environment better? Maybe takes a little bit of that variation piece out, which is also a cost challenge, as well, in industry.
Dror Benshetrit:
Yeah, absolutely. We all know that the process of creating those complex built environments are extremely time-consuming and take years. We want to let many urban planners and architects experiment with some of the directions that we’ve created—and keep it, you know, for the first few years very loose. When we actually build those projects and actually measure the results, we might be surprised. Right?
Every time we create something innovative that is intending to solve some particular problem, you create other problems that need some addressing.
Jen Hancock:
And so early days, obviously, in this. But what kind of reception have you seen from, like, finished or in-progress designs developed so far? What’s the reception been?
Dror Benshetrit:
There is all kinds of reception. Many people are, obviously, very excited and want to see this in the real world, and kind of always asking like, “Well, how far are we from finished projects that we can actually visit and experience?”
You know, there’s obviously a lot of skepticism around certain things. And the people that are just unable to get out of their linear mindsets to think.
And it’s also intimidating a lot of people. Right? Like it’s intimating a lot of people because it’s comprehensive. It’s really kind of trying to address multiple problems at once, rather than what we typically do is fragment our needs and our issues and address each one of them separately.
I’m so grateful for the insane amount of support that we’re getting from people that are really, really excited and understanding not just the complexity but also the incredible urgency to—to think differently. Right?
One prototype of this kind of environment can take 10, 15 years. If we need to wait that long in order for other people to adopt it, we’ve already lost, you know, 75 per cent of the future urban expansion that we’re expecting. So we have to prototype. We have to find proper funding for scientific validations. We have to really explore and experiment. And it requires massive amount of buy-in from municipalities, from construction companies, from developers.
Jen Hancock:
Complex, urgent, all of that.
Dror Benshetrit:
(laughs)
Jen Hancock:
Yeah.
Do you take other forms of sustainable development concepts—like 15-minute cities, net-zero living—how do you kind of integrate that in with your bioplanning method?
Dror Benshetrit:
Actually, it’s funny, I’m giving a talk with Carlos Moreno here in New York—the guy who created the—the 15-minute city concept. And it’s funny because on one of my first conversations with Carlos, I said, “You know, the whole premise of the 15-minute city is radial logic; and bioplanning essentially is taking that same logic but breaking it into multiple frames of scale. So you can actually think of the 3-minute city, and the 5-minute city, and the 7-minute city.” And Carlos was very excited about that exploration.
That’s just one but there’s many explorations that we’ve adapted certain things from, and many things that we are planning to adapt but kind of pushing it a little bit further.
I have also a huge obsession with the use of regenerative material. But there’s many areas around the world where you don’t have access and ability to create with truly regenerative materials. So we start with your geometrical shift, and then evolve to encourage other players to participate and explore or bring various materials to certain places.
One of the things, for instance, that I’m really obsessed with right now is certain permaculture practices on the land that needs to later on be developed for urban development. Which is very unusual. Right? Like you always think of development land as like, “Okay, we come in, we clear everything, and it becomes a construction site for the next, you know, five years, and then you bring some nature back.” But for us it’s quite the opposite. Like if the development takes seven years, the maturity of vegetation in seven years is insane, so why not start day one and work around it?
[music]
Jen Hancock:
We’ll be back with Dror and his green dreams after this.