Climate Action Week 2025: Leading architects share their insights on regenerative design and more

As the climate crisis accelerates, it’s clear that no single organisation, profession or community can solve it alone. Climate Action Week Sydney 2025, themed 'By the Community, For the Climate' provided the perfect platform for leading architects, building professionals, academics and various experts in the city to come together, share knowledge, challenge norms and reimagine systems.

Over the course of the week, COX Architecture participated in a series of conversations on regenerative design, material transparency and low-carbon innovation. COX’s national sustainability lead Joanne Andrade shares her perspective on the events that took place and key takeaways from the conversations.

Regenerative Now: Built environment projects already delivering regenerative outcomes

COX collaborated with Living Future Institute of Australia to host a panel showcasing the most inspiring regenerative built environment projects taking place around Australia. Held at the firm’s Sydney studio, the 'Regenerative Now' panel talk was a bold declaration that regenerative design isn’t just a distant goal – it’s already underway. 

Facilitated by Laura Hamilton-O'Hara from the Living Future Institute of Australia, the panel featured design professionals and architects who each unpacked a different aspect of regenerative design. What emerged was a rich variation of approaches, from co-design with communities, to designing with Country and even shaping a built environment to best support its seventh generation of users. 

Vanessa Trowell from ClarkeHopkinsClarke shared her insights on the importance of co-design and stakeholder engagement, using Bourke Street Public School as a prime example. Her key insight – that regeneration starts with listening, especially to those who will inherit the outcomes – showcased how regenerative design principles can be integrated into every aspect of a project, from big moves to small details. 

COX’s Joe Agius expanded this to the urban scale of Riverside Theatres in Parramatta, which responds to the ebb and flow of the Parramatta River, deeply rooted in Country, site, and context. More than design, this project is informed by a conversation with Place in consultation and collaboration with its First Nations custodians.

Lydia Vegas Rodriguez, also from COX showcased the National Circularity Centre in Bega, highlighting how the use of authentic, renewable materials can foster a sense of reciprocity between a building and its site. 

And finally, Paul Reidy from Fitzpatrick + Partners presented Project Mooro, a design deeply attuned to the site’s history and family legacy, but also the idea of designing not only for today, but for the ‘seventh generation’ into the future. 

Active Hope in action: Transparency and tools for change

Transparency in material specification, a critical – but often overlooked – piece in the climate puzzle, was another topic of discussion at the University of New South Wales and Arch_Manu, where COX’s Dr Matthias Irger joined a line-up of experts including Lucy Sutton (Bates Smart) and Valerie Saavedra Lux (BVN) to explore the role of Product Aware – a home-grown platform created by Australian Architects Declare volunteers. The platform empowers architects and designers with easy access to sustainability data for building products – promoting transparency and accountability in the specification process. 

These tools move beyond mere compliance to shifting power from opaque supply chains to informed, values-aligned design decisions.

Timber, together: Knowledge exchange across borders 

To wrap up the week, COX’s Sydney studio hosted the Timber Knowledge Exchange Forum, coinciding with the research tour of Satoru Yamashiro and Paul Shohei Kawanaka from Japan. This event brought together experts and professionals in timber construction to share knowledge, discuss challenges, and explore opportunities for innovation and collaboration. The forum featured a line-up of participants, including academics from the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, the façade and structural consultant from Eckersley O’Callaghan, market representatives from XLAM, and COX staff working on notable timber projects.

Discussions ranged from durability and moisture resilience issues through to the importance of education and innovation around fire safety. 

The event emphasised the importance of international collaboration to advance the timber construction industry, including the proposed establishment of a Pan-Pacific Research Network for Mass Timber Architecture. 

Done right, timber construction can increase carbon sequestration, support new economies and promote circularity in the built environment. But it will take shared knowledge, international cooperation and bold leadership to unlock that future. 

The way forward

“Climate Action Week left us inspired, but also clear-eyed. It underscored the responsibility we carry as designers and the power we unlock when we work across silos,” says Andrade. “As we carry on forward, we remain committed to the idea of Active Hope – not passive optimism. It’s an ongoing practice of engaging, listening and acting. We design with this mind-set every day with people who share our vision for a climate-positive future.”

Photo credit: Evan Maclean