Phillip B. Roös

Dr Phillip B. Roös PhD has a wide range of interests, activities and influences as he works at the nexus of architecture, design, planning, philosophy, art, ecopsychology, and environmental stewardship. Through his drawings, paintings, writings, and adventures into the wilderness he explores the deeper meaning of our innate affiliation with Earth, scrutinizing the link between our past, present, and future connections to life. His work reflects a deeply personal ongoing journey in which he investigates questions of human conscience as well as current global social and environmental issues.

He has been working as an architect and design professional for over 35 years on an extensive range of projects, in Europe, Africa and Australasia. He is committed to a resilient future for both humans and nature. His life’s work is to seek innovative solutions to address the major challenges of our time.

His practice and research interests are centred on the human-nature relationship and the identification of optimised design processes based on a regenerative-adaptive pattern language theory. This approach incorporates the principles of biophilia and regenerative design as well as an adaptive pattern language that re-establishes our wholeness with nature and considers the vulnerabilities of a changing landscape. His recent book titled ‘Regenerative-Adaptive Design for Sustainable Development, A Pattern Language Approach’ (Roös, 2021, Springer) has been hailed by Professor Mark DeKay as “a radical and visionary work of immanent practicality… a new manner of thinking if humanity wants to survive”.

He contributed to various other books including ‘Geelong’s Changing Landscape: Ecology, Development and Conservation (Jones & Roös, 2019, CSIRO Publishing), and ‘Heal the Scar: Regenerative Futures of Damaged Landscapes (Roös, 2020, Deakin).

Dr Roös is currently the Director of the Live+Smart Research Laboratory and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University.