“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

R. Buckminster Fuller (Honorary Gen Z)

From Irregular Labs:

We are in an unprecedented moment, tiptoeing through crumbling systems, committing to building better. However, in order to build better, we must understand why current systems and structures failed in the first place. We must understand the environment——the foundation, the ecosystem, the site——upon which we will build and the tools with which we do so.

Everyone needs to ask themselves: How do we build within a world that is fragmented and fluid? What does it mean to build “better?” How do we build when, as the past six months have illustrated, there are no straight lines or right angles? How do be find balance when our base is, and will continue to be, cracked and curved, borderless and binary-free?

Irregular Labs, armed with 60 global Gen Z futurists (the real builders of tomorrow), decided to tackle these questions, offering a proposition——or, perhaps, a provocation——for everyone wanting to build: REGENERATION.

The good news is, the fundamentals of REGENERATION are not particularly innovative or audacious. In fact, from Aristotle to Ariana Grande, people have espoused REGENERATION for ages. The bad news is, if you thought this was a momentary blip, a COVID-created snafu, sorry, the world has been fluid for quite some time. And, according to Gen Z, shows no sign of subsiding, no tidy resolution in sight. Therefore, continuing to pour concrete onto quicksand won’t work. To build better, we must accept our new environment and design systems that not only allow us to survive, but to thrive.

The results of our investigation into REGENERATION will take the form of a fully-realized world, one whose story is told through content that includes a graphic novel, the REGENERATIVE Covenant, field reports from academics, strategists, and futurists outside the Irregular Labs community, a podcast, live-streamed “town hall” meetings, and editorial pieces from Gen Z thought leaders around the world. It is our hope that by showing what a REGENERATIVE FUTURE looks like, and sharing the artifacts from this world, we can more successfully educate older generations who are committed to “building better.”

This is what better looks like…

Our Methodology

Rather than taking a more traditional approach to investigating and understanding what a sustainable, post-COVID future looks like according to Gen Z, we employed tactics from fields such as speculative design and popular entertainment. Working with USC’s Civic Paths and their world-building methodology, 60 young futurists (16-28 yrs) from 17 countries participated in a series of workshops and small discussion groups over the course of two months. The participants included: architects, artists, scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, designers, politicians, activists, and educators. All were selected based upon criteria that qualifies them as exceptional builders of our future.

The result of this study is a world: RGF_1. This world illustrates the principles of REGENERATION and the ways in which those principles will inform future social, political, and economic systems. Through a program of “drops” (content, product, and experience) made in collaboration with artists, institutions, brands, and media partners, RGF_1's story will be told in real-time across social and digital channels, blurring lines between real and imaginary, present and future.