New York Passive House Announces 2026 Regenerative Metropolis Symposium and Call for Proposals

NEW YORK, NY —  At a moment of growing climate urgency and shifting federal environmental policy, New York Passive House (NYPH) has announced its 2026 Regenerative Metropolis Symposium and opened its Call for Proposals, inviting the architecture, engineering, construction, policy, and adjacent communities to accelerate climate leadership in the built environment.

The symposium will take place during Climate Week in NYC - September 2026, convening practitioners and innovators advancing high-performance buildings, regenerative design, and scalable urban climate solutions. Proposals are due April 17, 2026 (9:00 PM ET).

The announcement comes as national environmental protections and climate findings face renewed uncertainty, underscoring the growing responsibility of states, cities, institutions, and industry leaders to drive measurable progress in decarbonization, resilience, and resource stewardship.

Now Accepting Session Proposals!

Preparations for NYPH’s Regenerative Metropolis Symposium 2026 are underway!  Reflecting the inspiring success of this past year’s event, we again invite this incredible passive house and regenerative design & construction community to submit proposals for presentations.  We are interested in any project, development, process, system, policy or product - that reaches for Regenerative Design and addresses Passive House principles. The additional frameworks we are including this year also reflect an approach to circularity, systems thinking, and economics, with the aim of enabling projects in a way that is: financially feasible, constructible, and resilient over time.  

A Call to Lead at the Scale of the Climate Challenge

Chaired by Sara Bayer of Magnusson Architecture and Planning (MAP), the 2026 Regenerative Metropolis Symposium calls on the AEC community to move beyond incremental change toward regenerative approaches that restore ecological systems, strengthen communities, and deliver long-term value.

“The built environment has a critical role to play in responding to the climate crisis,” said Bayer. “This year we are drawing inspiration from two modes of thought to deepen the discussion and bring insight into the larger frameworks that govern the built environment. These are Regenerative Economics and Systems Thinking, represented by such thought leaders as the Doughnut Economics Action Lab and the Buckminster Fuller Institute.”

NYPH is seeking proposals demonstrating real-world impact across areas including:

• Projects that address the value of Passive Buildings 
• Making projects pencil (development financing, underwriting, and project economics)
• Affordability of construction
• Comparing retrofit vs. rebuild (from the lens of cost, carbon, systems thinking)
• Designing for deconstruction and reuse
• Designing building/community features that generate and redistribute income
• Material and resource efficiency, and waste reduction
• Replicability - prefabrication, panelized construction, and repeatable approaches
• Novel approaches to maintenance & operations affordability
• Projects that tie in concepts from Regenerative Economics
• Projects that take inspiration from Buckminster Fuller principles

Shaping the Future of Urban Climate Action

The Regenerative Metropolis Symposium serves as NYPH’s flagship platform for cross-sector collaboration, bringing together designers, engineers, builders, developers, policymakers, and manufacturers committed to advancing climate-positive buildings and regenerative urban systems.

Professionals advancing measurable solutions for resilient, low-carbon cities are encouraged to submit proposals and help shape the next era of the built environment.

Larger Frameworks - Regenerative Economics

This year we are drawing inspiration from two modes of thought to deepen the discussion and bring insight into the larger frameworks that govern the built environment. These are Regenerative Economics and Systems Thinking, represented by such thought leaders as the “Doughnut Economics Action Lab” and the “Buckminster Fuller Institute”.

 Regenerative approaches are emerging in every human endeavor, and the field of economics is no exception. For example, since the days of Adam Smith, our current framework has been built upon the concept of scarcity, with the American Economic association defining economics as: “It’s the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives, or the study of decision-making”.  This is only one example of the fundamental framing that has failed us, with Robin Wall Kimmerer describing our situation thusly: “continued fealty to economies based on competition for manufactured scarcity, rather than cooperation around natural abundance, is now causing us to face the danger of producing real scarcity…”  Regenerative Economics however is taking hold and expressed in works of economist Elinor Ostrom, Kate Rayworth, and Valerie Luzadis, and organizations such as BioFi Project, United States Society for Ecological Economics, Capital Institute, Dark Matter Labs, Doughnut Economics Action Lab, and more!  The design and construction industry will resonate with the way foundational economic images, assumed to be immutable laws (such as the supply/depend curve), are actually preventing us from seeing the full picture.

The work and teachings of R. Buckminster Fuller inspired a generation of ecological designers, those designers integrating natural systems with human systems at the scales of building, community, and city. Part of Bucky’s core thinking: do more with less, supporting 100% of humanity with the resources we have. An inventor, he thought at the scale of a tool and the scale of the earth. Among Bucky’s notable architectural achievements: (1) the Dymaxion House, originally conceived in the late 1920s, brought to public in mid-1940’s because requisite materials were only then available.  Designed to be light, portable, suspended on a central mast, self-sufficient with respect to water and waste management, efficiently using recyclable material.  (2) The United States Pavilion at Expo Montreal 1966, a 12 storey geodesic dome, an extremely strong and resilient structure enclosing a large volume of space with minimal material. Regenerative design and integration of whole systems, natural and human, are embedded in Buckminster Fuller’s work and teachings. Today, organizations such as the Buckminster Fuller Institute continue his work including on how Regenerative Design intersects with Regenerative Finance.

We look forward to your submission, sharing the work, and discussing openly the road ahead! 

Criteria for Proposal Evaluation:

• Deployment of Passive House principles
• Data, modeled or measured
• Comprehensiveness of Regenerative Design
• Integration and addressing of large frameworks and systems
• Higher Density or more Urban contexts preferred

Call for Proposals — Key Details

Event: Regenerative Metropolis Symposium 2026

Host: New York Passive House

Date: September 2026

Location: Manhattan, New York City

Proposal Submission Form: https://forms.office.com/r/mPrgLWzbVF

Application Deadline:  April 17th 2026 (9pm)