Avenir Permaculture is a French regenerative landscape design company (founded 2022, Nouvelle-Aquitaine), built on its founder’s 20 years of experience designing regenerative landscapes for private owners, businesses and municipalities. Its flagship solution, LOWASIS, answers a simple paradox: while cities overheat, every roof sends rainwater straight to the sewer. LOWASIS turns this abundance into urban coolness.

A LOWASIS island is a turnkey nature-based cooling island (typically 200 to 400 m²) combining: rooftop rainwater harvesting and buried storage sized for about 75 days of drought autonomy; a four-layer planted canopy, from trees to ground cover, that shades and transpires; smart drip irrigation driven by soil-moisture sensors, so plants keep cooling during heatwaves instead of shutting down; and a small biodiversity pond. It uses zero drinking water and is designed to keep working under drought restrictions, when conventional green spaces lose their cooling power.

LOWASIS creates shaded, cooler outdoor spaces for residents, students and employees, and can help cool the surrounding buildings. Co-benefits: biodiversity, soil life, carbon storage, stormwater management and de-sealing of urban soils. Each island is co-designed and planted with its future users. Our purpose: reconnecting people with the rest of the living world.

Every component has been tested for about 20 years on our experimental site at La Courdemière (Vienne, France). Combining them into a single, instrumented island is what we are now deploying, starting with a pilot prepared with the University of Poitiers under an ERDF call on urban heat islands (current maturity: TRL 6).

In Barcelona, we are looking for municipalities, landscape contractors, water utilities and research teams to test LOWASIS in Mediterranean climates.

Cities throw away the water that could cool them. LOWASIS is an all-in-one cooling island fed exclusively by rainwater: buried storage, sensor-driven irrigation and a four-layer planted canopy that keeps transpiring during heatwaves, when unirrigated vegetation shuts down. Zero drinking water, designed to operate during droughts. Every pilot is instrumented: where the science stops, we measure cooling, carbon and biodiversity services together

Our ecological commitment is regeneration itself: every LOWASIS island leaves the site more alive than it found it. We de-seal urban soils, rebuild living soils, plant diverse multi-layer vegetation, create habitats for biodiversity and give rainwater back to the ground instead of the sewer, with zero drinking water. Users co-design and plant their island, and each pilot is scientifically monitored with the University of Poitiers. No certification yet (small company).

Founder: 20 years designing regenerative landscapes for private clients, businesses and municipalities; experimental site at La Courdemière (France). LOWASIS (launched 2025): first paid order, a private client hosting a LOWASIS island; ERDF urban heat island project with the University of Poitiers (Futuroscope campus, 250 m² pilot island, submission Oct 2026); ongoing discussions with a municipality in Vienne for a 250 m² island.