C3 Living Design Project: Overview
Curating . Creating . Connecting
A Knowledge Hub, Exchange and Living Foundry
Fostering a New Paradigm through Transparent Creativity
The C3 Living Design Project Purpose: Boldly Pursing Transformative Change with Hope, Humility, and Vision
Essential Level | About 5 Minute Read | 26 . Jan . 2025
The C3 Living Design Project boldly embraces humanity’s inherent capacity for creativity and innovation to shape the pivotal transformation unfolding today. Since 2013, the project’s core mission has grown from its origins as a paradigm-shifting force in practice methodologies, resilient design and master’s level regenerative design theory and practice education into a dynamic platform for advancing deep levels of resilience, regeneration, and transformative innovation.
The project’s mission has evolved to serve as a comprehensive knowledge hub and exchange for Living Design, uniting years of practice and theoretical exploration into a cohesive, integrated approach. The platform features news and professional updates, curated tools, and a library of videos, literature, and technics. It includes an online theory + practice lab—the Living Foundry and Innovation Studio—and a dedicated online education portal. Its essential goal is to cultivate profound innovation, foster meaningful collaboration, and enable transformative exploration of creative methods and actionable visions for a living world.
This new phase is a pursuit – one that transitions the project from a Pivotal Level to a Transformative Level. That means harvesting the fruits of past work, learning from failures and leaning into the next generation of ideas.
This project, like any living system, is adaptive, evolving, and continuously shaped by the challenges it seeks to address. Founded and developed by Doug Pierce—a practicing regenerative architect, deep generalist, and resilient design strategist with extensive academic and professional experience—this work builds on decades of interdisciplinary practice, teaching, policy, and inquiry. Guided by a mosaic of ideas, insights, and collaborations with leading designers, engineers, innovators, creatives, and academic thinkers, it reflects a holistic approach to living design solutions across all scales—spanning products, retrofits, new buildings, urban planning, policy, and more.
Now entering a new phase, the C3 online Platform is being wholistically restructured. The original online platform was replaced with the current format in 2023. As time is of the essence, the new platform is being transparently and incrementally constructed, updated and expanded in real-time. As you make your way around the platform, you will see pages that are partially complete, Public Draft posts, and tags noting updates to existing content. You may even see updates to content or pages as they occur – to make the most of available resources, much of the work is completed directly on the live site.
Visit our Living Foundry to see C3 project work under develop using the Living Design Approach. The approach frequently includes requests for comments and collaboration. We’ll post those calls on social media, in the Living Foundry and across the website.
A note on the use of AI in developing the Project: To get the most out of the available resources and time, AI is used as a content editor. In some cases, AI is used as a primary content generator, in which case the work will be clearly marked as such. Any, and all work involving AI is closely reviewed by a human.
Project Updates
Platform Update | Now it's on to building out the "Living Foundry" page, and setting up the companion "Curate . Create . Connect" bluesky social accounts that support the Foundry. Work starts today.
— C3 Living Design Project (@c3livingdesign.bsky.social) January 4, 2025 at 1:56 PM
C3LD Platform Project #P001 Living Foundry | Bluesky Social accounts are active for the Curate . Create . Connect timelines: @c3curate.bsky.social @c3create.bsky.social @c3connect.bsky.social
— Curate | C3 Living Design Project (@c3curate.bsky.social) January 5, 2025 at 6:00 AM
C3LD Platform Project #P001 Living Foundry | Bluesky Social accounts are active for the Curate . Create . Connect timelines: @c3curate.bsky.social @c3create.bsky.social @c3connect.bsky.social
— C3 Create (@c3create.bsky.social) January 4, 2025 at 4:36 PM
C3LD Platform Project #P001 Living Foundry | Bluesky Social accounts are active for the Curate . Create . Connect timelines: @c3curate.bsky.social @c3create.bsky.social @c3connect.bsky.social
— C3 Connect (@c3connect.bsky.social) January 5, 2025 at 6:01 AM
Living Design: Shaping the Great Transformation
Embracing Boundless Possibilities, Facing Unprecedented Challenges
We live in a time of extraordinary possibilities and unraveling—a moment when the systems and paradigms that have shaped us for centuries and millennia are breaking down, revealing both potential and peril. Climate change accelerates, ecosystems falter, economic inequities deepen, and the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence threatens to widen these divides and create its own existential crisis. These crises, interconnected and systemic, demand more than incremental change—they demand bold, compassionate, and creative action.
Living systems, including our society, seek balance. Given the extremes in our current systems—societal, environmental and economic deep transformation is eminent, and underway as we speak. The question is not if we will change, but how and at what speed? Will we stumble into collapse, or will we embrace the opportunity to create a new present and future defined by resilience, equity, and regeneration? The stakes demand boldness—not born of arrogance, but of necessity.
What the world needs at this moment is mindful, transformative innovation—rooted in compassion, empathy, and the unshakable belief that creativity is a force for life.
The C3 Living Design Project is rooted in hope and humility, grounded in a deep recognition of the fragility and interconnectedness of our shared world. Founded in this understanding, it serves as a call to purposeful action. Together, we can rise to meet this moment, co-creating a future where humanity and the whole of life not only survives but thrives.
Living Design: Guided by Universal Creativity
The essence of the C3 Living Design Project resonates with the Poietic concept of Universal Creativity, a vision that transcends disciplines to offer a well-informed design theory rooted in the observation of how life evolves, adapts, and thrives. Universal Creativity invites us to think expansively, to question the boundaries we’ve inherited, and to reimagine the way we design to emulate the creative methods of nature.
Emergent through the perspective of Universal Creativity, the C3 Living Design Project explores the patterns, forces, and dynamics that shape life. Universal Creativity patterns illuminate how creativity manifests itself across scales (and disciplines), bridging the intellectual and the practical in the pursuit of deeply transformative design and innovation.
Universal Creativity Patterns
Names and Keywords
Through the perspective of Universal Creativity, we can start to see life’s intrinsic capacity and unrelenting drive for creativity, sustainability, resilience, and regeneration not as abstract ideals but as patterns we can learn from and emulate. This framework bridges the intellectual and the practical, inviting us to curate ideas, create transformative solutions, and connect across systems and perspectives. It is both a guide and a challenge: to approach every crisis as an opportunity for renewal.
Vision is not confined to a single entry point. It may inspire initial actions, deepen during engagement with Practice and Creativity, or emerge through reflection. By integrating Vision, practitioners amplify the impact and meaning of their efforts, embracing the interconnectedness of all things and the regenerative potential of design.
Call to Purpose
This moment calls for more than action. It calls for purpose. The choices we make today will shape the trajectory of this transformation. Will we settle for incremental change, or will we rise to the challenge of creating a resilient and regenerative world?
The C3 Living Design Project envisions a future where resilience and regeneration are not merely aspirations but the foundation of how we live, work, and interact with one another. It is more than an idea—it is a commitment to imagining and building that future. Together, we can create a world guided by compassion, creativity, and the courage to act.
Explore the tools, insights, and frameworks that this project offers. Integrate them into your work, your community, and your daily life. Challenge yourself to think differently, act boldly, and live creatively. Together, we can build a future defined by resilience, regeneration, and the unshakable belief that creativity is a force for life.
The time is now. Let us meet this moment with all that we are and all that we can become.
Project Framework
Menu Categories
The C3 Project’s online platform has six menu categories: News, Library, Tools, Foundry, Learn, and RELi / ADAPT. These categories are specific to the online project platform and to directly extend into Living Design as a concept.
Elements
The Elements Pattern – included in Universal Creativity – forms the structural backbone for Living Design and the C3 Project. With some modifications for each of the Menu Categories, the Elements provide the a common, but flexible framework for the Project News, Library, Tools, Foundry, Learning Curriculum and ADAPT Guidelines. You will seem the listed above in the Universal Creativty Pattens and they are included here again for clarity as a framework. The Elements are:
Pattern Post Tags
Universal Creativity Patterns provide a systematic approach to tagging, organizing, and curating creative resources, knowledge assets, and collaborative content. They offer a framework to organize a wide array characteristics and technics that support design, creativity and innovation. While these are listed further above as Patterns, they are listed here for clarity as Post Tags:
Where to Start
Living Design is inclusive and adaptable. Start where you are and make it your own. You can go deep and wide, you can go shallow and wide, you can come and go, and anything in between or beyond. Living Design can be a life long journey exploring creativity, passions, and meaning.
Regardless of where you are on your journey, here is a suggestion of how to get started based on over two decades teaching Living Design to professionals and masters level college students from around the world for over 20 years: Start with a few Essential Level theory videos on Systems Thinking and maybe some readings to set the stage – even if they are videos you’ve watched in past, watch them just to catch the new stuff you didn’t pick-up on before.
Next, dive into some Attributes + Technics —Essential Level guidelines and checklists. If green design is new to you, they are a great way to jump start your essential knowledge. If you have past experience with them, but it’s been a while, then a refresh is warranted. If you are feeling well beyond this, then try taking fresh look at this material by moving your thinking laterally as a means to gain perspective and actionable knowledge. How do I learn to work as an interdisciplinary practitioner with it? How do other professions see this and work with it? Or explore something totally new but salient to your professional context. Or, go hyper-deep with your area of passion until you reach that new (and sometimes radical) level of perspective on the world gained only from ultra-emersion (but don’t get stuck there – make sure you come back to the surface and move laterally to the next deep dive).
From there, explore creativity methods and integrate them into your daily practice. Work new tools. Then, repeat over and over, each time going wider, going deeper, and integrating your new knowledge until you are an Deep Generalist. Go beyond where you were. Always pursue lateral movement, Always drive for further depth. Explore, and then explore some more. Integrate what you learned (always and continuously) and then start it all again. This time mix in a little transformational material. Here is a simple step-by-step: