Anna Storgaard
May 7, 2026
Ramboll Foundation partners with USM Futures Lab to accelerate regenerative rebuilding worldwide
The Ramboll Foundation has entered a strategic partnership with USM Futures Lab to explore how societies can rebuild after crises in ways that are resilient and regenerative, creating long-term value for people, nature, and societies.
The collaboration brings together Ramboll’s global engineering, design and consultancy expertise, the Ramboll Foundation’s philanthropic mission-driven funding, and USM Futures Lab’s forward-looking innovation platform. Together, we aim to redefine how rebuilding is approached in the face of growing climate, social, and economic disruptions.
Moving beyond recovery
At the heart of the partnership is a shared question: When we rebuild after crisis, can we create systems that are stronger, more adaptive and more beneficial than before?
Across the world, communities are increasingly facing overlapping crises—from climate-induced disasters to conflict and economic instability. Traditional models of rebuilding, focused on restoring what was lost, are no longer sufficient, and that is really why we have started the Futures Lab innovation programme.
USM Futures Lab describes a shift from recovery to regeneration: an approach that rebuilds and improves social, ecological and economic systems simultaneously, enabling long-term resilience and thriving communities.
Through the partnership, Ramboll Foundation and USM Futures Lab will explore how rebuilding can:
- Strengthen ecosystems alongside infrastructure
- Empower communities as active participants and co-creators
- Integrate social, environmental and economic systems
- Redefine value beyond short-term financial returns
A platform for innovation and collaboration
Launched in 2023, with support from Swiss not-for-profit Fondation USM, USM Futures Lab operates as an “engine for insight-to-imagination-to-impact,” bringing together experts across disciplines to turn future-oriented thinking into tangible solutions.
The 2026 programme on Regenerative Rebuilding will convene diverse global perspectives, including engineers, designers, policymakers, scientists, and community organisations. The aim is to co-create new approaches to rebuilding.
Central to this initiative is a “future world” framework, which challenges traditional thinking and explores how societies could function if regeneration, rather than extraction, became the guiding principle, and this is an approach that we highly stand by at the Ramboll Foundation.
The approach encourages radical rethinking of the built environment, from materials and infrastructure to governance systems and community ownership models.
Unlocking impact across Ramboll and beyond
For Ramboll, the partnership represents an opportunity to connect its technical expertise with emerging thinking on sustainability, resilience and societal transformation.
By linking real-world projects with USM Futures Lab’s experimental approach, this collaboration will test and generate practical methods and frameworks that can be applied across Ramboll’s global operations and shared with partners and clients. This is an exiting opportunity to rethink our approaches, role and value as a company and industry.
The outcomes are expected to include:
- New methodologies for regenerative design and planning
- Prototypes and pilot projects that test innovative concepts
- A playbook of scalable approaches for rebuilding
- Knowledge sharing across industries and geographies
Selected ideas and insights will be shared with leading experts and institutions, supporting wider dissemination and adoption.
A new way of defining value
A key ambition of the partnership is to redefine how success is measured in rebuilding efforts. Instead of focusing solely on speed, cost or output, regenerative rebuilding prioritises long-term wellbeing—across communities, ecosystems, and economies.
This includes metrics such as ecological health, social cohesion, and the ability of systems to adapt and evolve over time.
The initiative also emphasises justice and inclusion, recognising that equitable, community-centred approaches are essential for sustainable recovery.
Too often, the built environment is driven by forms of value that offer short-term gain. As soon as crisis hits, those value models fall apart. In exploring approaches that value society, nature and wider, relational systems through Futures Lab, we're testing much-needed models for a world that is ready, and more resilient to future shocks.
Want to know more?
Asbjørn Kristensen Høgsbro
Head of Philanthropy
+45 61 24 63 69
