Circular + regenerative strategies in the built environment
Learning to design and build differently
The way we build today - whether high-rise towers or residential tract housing are single use buildings. Much like single-use plastic, they are driving excessive amounts of waste, using materials made with petroleum products (plastics) that will never biodegrade. The downstream costs are immeasurable. While it may have made sense to build this way 50-100 years ago, when life and business were more predictable, the sheer unpredictability of the modern world means we need to learn to design and build, well, differently.
Celeste Tell | co-founder + managing director
Celeste is an interdisciplinary strategist, designer, systems thinker, change agent and thought leader passionate about developing and implementing integrated strategies to reduce the burden of the built environment on the planet while providing an exceptional user experience and ROI over time. Her deep dive into the circular economy began in 2015. Frustrated with the inherent waste in typical design and construction projects, Celeste stumbled on the concept of circular economy and never looked back. She has held leadership roles as both end-user/occupier and consultant on large, technically, and organizationally complex capital projects for clients in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She has been a key member of national workplace consortiums, has served on non-profit and public boards and is a contributing author on embodied carbon and circular economics for the Sustainability and Planetary Health chapter in the IFMA Foundation’s Work on the Move 3 book. Her background is distinct and diverse, and includes a Master of Design (MDes) in Strategy & Planning from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, a BA, Interior Design from Michigan State University, and a certificate in Regenerative Economics from the Capital Institute.
