EARTH CENTRED ARCHITECTURE

We are an award-winning collaborative with a mission to meaningfully address the Climate Crisis through Regenerative Design. We interweave Architecture and Nature to create novel forms that restore biodiversity, foster resilience, and valourize Indigenous Culture. Reconnecting with our family’s Indigenous roots has revealed that ancestral wisdom provides a path for living harmoniously within our biosphere.

Our holistic co-creation approach spans residential, cultural, urban design, permaculture, and infrastructure sectors. Our backgrounds in residential development and product design give us particular depth of experience in multifamily housing and material innovation. Using Permaculture Design principles, we work with the natural flows of energy, water, and nutrients through sites to create synergies and convert waste into valuable resources. This Earth-centered approach optimizes carbon sequestration, energy production, water harvesting, and food security.

ENERGY

Our first step in any project is to reduce energy demand through solar orientation, high-performance building envelopes, and innovative mechanical systems. Onsite production is crucial for ensuring energy security. We evaluate opportunities for wind, solar, micro-hydro, and biomass cogeneration to support community energy independence.

CARBON

Recognizing that the Climate Crisis is fundamentally a Carbon Crisis, we meticulously study the carbon balance in each project and craft strategies to optimize Operational and Embodied Carbon. This involves not only reducing emissions but also utilizing innovative materials and methods that actively sequester carbon.

WATER

By incorporating Permaculture elements such as swales, bio-ponds, and rain gardens, we create systems that capture and purify rainwater, reducing reliance on conventional water supplies and enhancing resilience during times of drought. On-site water storage is also a key defence against wildfires.

CULTURE

We engage in a co-creation process founded on listening and learning, ensuring that all community voices are heard and respected. We valourize Indigenous culture through finding contemporary forms to showcase the sophistication of ancestral strategies that are deeply rooted in their territory.

Our company culture is characterized by a collaborative, non-hierarchical structure where people work with us, not for us. This promotes a supportive and inclusive environment where collaboration creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

FOUNDERS

We created MINDFUL ARCHITECTURE to amplify our efforts to address the Climate Crisis, multiplying our creative energy to heal the Earth. We are compelled regenerative designers, yogis, outdoor explorers, and we love to explore and learn from the wisdom of all cultures. We strive to live a life that is authentic, tuned in with our inner springs and committed to creating a spacious lifestyle amongst our hurried society. We are urban homesteaders, nurturing our two children on the forested slopes of North Vancouver. We are grateful to our gracious hosts, the sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations for the opportunity to live, work and play within their unceded ancestral territories.

T. **Maginnis** Cocivera Principal & Architect

T. Maginnis Cocivera is a Registered Architect with the AIBC and has a Masters in Architecture (M.Arch) from Dalhousie University. His master’s thesis on building-integrated infrastructure that harnesses synergies between energy, water, waste and food production was awarded the top prize in the Cascadia Green Building Council's Closing the Loop Design Competition in 2006.

He has worked for Mario Bellini Associati in Milan, where he was a key member of the Louvre Department of Islamic Arts design team that won the international design competition, and for Busby Perkins+Will in Vancouver, where he was Project Architect on two leading edge sustainable projects: Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 and the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability at UBC.

For the seven years prior to starting up Mindful Architecture, he served as Vice President Development at Polygon Homes, overseeing the delivery of more than 2000 multifamily homes. He headed the team that created a new type of open plan townhome that won the Urban Development Institute Award of Excellence in 2014 and has since become an industry standard.

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**REgen** Geneviève Noël Principal & Director

Geneviève Noel is a visionary inventor with a mission to restore a symbiotic relationship between our built environment and our planet by being an active participant in the valourization of Indigenous Culture.

Geneviève creates opportunities for the re-integration of biodiversity and food security in urban environments. She also orchestrates unexpected circular economies by up-cycling waste streams into useful, life-affirming products. Geneviève has a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University and a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Permaculture Research Institute. As founder of MINDFUL INNOVATIONS, she has designed and patented a Cradle to Cradle Certified living wall system that has been commercialized worldwide. Geneviève has conceived other nature-centred building products such as our Medulla Regenerative Insulation and co-created our DCarb concrete.

In 2009, MINDFUL INNOVATIONS was awarded the Small Business BC Sustainable Leadership Award and in 2023, MI was selected as part of the Game Changers leading companies in Natural Product Innovation for their Medulla Insulation.

Aligned with her regenerative efforts, Geneviève has personally planted over 1 million trees on the West Coast of British Columbia. She is proud to be Québécoise with French Canadian and Indigenous ancestry.