The Nook

Critiquing an older project to understand Regeneration

Reweave focused on informal settlements in Port Moresby, served as a critical foundation for understanding regeneration to apply to The Nook. In Reweave, sustainable practices are approached through resilient housing, locally sourced materials, and community participation. It addresses the needs of a vulnerable, resource-scarce environment by implementing modular housing typologies, circular economy principles, and distributed systems for waste and energy management. Critiquing Reweave highlighted the role of adaptive design and local resource use in creating self-sustaining systems, insights which informed The Nook’s goal of transforming urban spaces into regenerative ecosystems for both humans and nonhumans.

Site-based Research

The process began with a deep contextual analysis of the Cardigan Street car park and its surrounding urban ecology. This included mapping human flows, vegetation patterns, material waste cycles, and wildlife traces to identify spatial and ecological constraints and potentials. 

More-than-human Design Lens

The design strategy was guided by more-than-human perspectives, drawing from post-anthropocentric theory, multispecies design, and relational ontologies. This shifted the framing of the site from being purely functional for humans to being shared territory for both human and nonhuman actors. 

Spatial & Product Prototyping

The intervention combined spatial design elements (shade structures, seating, water features) with product-level details (bird/bat shelters, pollinator corridors, modular planters) to create a multi-scalar experience that invited cross-species interaction. 

Regenerative Material Strategies

Locally sourced, reused materials were selected to align with regenerative principles, minimising ecological footprint while enhancing soil health, water absorption, and biodiversity on site.