Abundant Futures
Designing for human and planetary flourishing
Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution driven by unsustainable development and resource extraction are accelerating at an unprecedented rate. These disruptions degrade ecosystems, threaten public health, and deepen social inequities. Simultaneously, conventional construction practices continue to exploit materials and labor, leaving behind environmental destruction and inequitable systems that fail both people and the planet.
Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, Bugesera, Rwanda
Iwan Baan
The Abundant Futures Design Lab works toward a future where the design and building process contributes to the health of all living things.
By restoring landscapes, rethinking supply chains, and embedding care into the built environment, we create systems that sequester carbon, regenerate biodiversity, and improve human well-being. Our work transforms how and why we build—advancing practices that honor ecological limits while cultivating abundance for communities and ecosystems alike.
Butaro Doctors' Sharehousing
Alan Ricks
Case Study:
Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
Iwan Baan
Human expansion has come chiefly at the expense of the remainder of the natural world. In the Virunga mountains, agriculture and urban development encompass the Volcanoes National Park, putting massive pressure on the unique flora and fauna. Through encroachment over decades, the national park has halved in size. Through poaching, conflict, and diseases passed on from humans, it was feared that mountain gorillas were extinct in 2000.
However, the mountain gorillas represent a rare conservation success story, with the population in the region growing from a low of 250 in the 1980s to more than 600 today. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund is dedicated to their conservation and their new campus is an opportunity to demonstrate how human development can co-exist with the rest of nature and heal ecological damage.
Iwan Baan
