Abstract:
In New Zealand, the exploitation of natural capital for industrial production leaves a growing number of dead
sites that harm local ecosystems, heavily affecting their environment and communities. Communities, that have
historically relied on the economic and social support that the operation of these sites once provided. Current
approaches to the reintegration of dead sites fail to accurately identify the breadth of potential solutions and
settle for the minimum mitigation of environmental damage, transforming into stagnant and unproductive
sites. This thesis argues that regenerative design and natural capitalism thinking could follow surrealistic and
visionary paths to reintegrate dead sites back into the changed social, cultural, and economic systems of their
communities. Such an approach envisions a comprehensive social, cultural, and environmental reconciliation
strategy that transforms the criticalities of damaged leftover industrial sites into key elements of an ecological
reconquest of relationality. This strategy combines two distinct streams of investigation, the first of which uses
a speculative lens to revise and re-envision current sustainable and ‘pseudo-sustainable’ techniques, concepts,
and technologies of regeneration. The second stream uses a system-dynamics approach to ideate possible
design strategies that lead to a sustainable reintegration of the dead sites. Thus, the principal objective of
this thesis is to challenge current approaches to the redevelopment of key industrial sites by unlocking the
potentials and possibilities of their urban, cultural, and ecological landscapes for the radical rejuvenation and
reintegration of these sites as anchors for positive development. This research resulted in a system of design
that challenges current approaches, utilising surreal techniques to break assumptions and present new avenues of design research.