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PID Attends Regenerative Communities Summit at the UN
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July 23, 2026
On July 21st, PID Floors was honored to attend The Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization’s Regenerative Communities Summit at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. The theme for CSU’s flagship conference was exploring the potential for Regenerative Design thinking to reposition the built environment’s place within the context of social, economic, and ecological communities.
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PID Floors was excited to gather with over 100 fellow attendees in the UN’s Conference Room of Nations, including our friend and Director of Educational Outreach, Hans Galutera and many other familiar New York architect and design industry friends. It was an informative and uplifting afternoon of conscious and engaged conversation, very much aligned with PID Floors’ sustainability values and practices, urging its audience to remain inquisitive: How we can become better environmental stewards and guardians? How is sustainability viewed as part of our everyday thoughts? Are we considering best practices as we design, build, and educate?
As a family-owned luxury wood flooring company with showrooms in New York City, Miami, Boston, Dallas, and Indiana, PID Floors remains passionately committed to the ongoing health, protection, and well-being of both our clients and the environment. PID Floors strives to uphold high standards for human health and natural stewardship and maintains a number of certifications, including GREENGUARD certification, FSC certification, FloorScore® certification, Cradle to Cradle Certification™, and to publish Health Product Declarations through the HPD-Collaborative. Our aim is to have PID Floors products meet or exceed applicable industry standards, both present and future. To that end, we maintain a company-wide focus on working with suppliers who provide us with strong opportunities to offer products that:
• Are responsibly harvested
• Come from legal sources
• Are produced using only ethical practices
• Avoid harmful chemicals and meet strict indoor air quality standards
• Comply with formaldehyde and Total Volatile Organic Compound (TVOC) content and emissions requirements
• Come from recycled materials whenever possible, & can be reused rather than discarded
• Are tested to rigorous standards for safety, integrity, and performance
• Come from local sources whenever possible, as well as NOFMA-certified mills.
The Regenerative Communities Summit panel discussions focused on:
• Evolution of Regenerative Design Thinking, the role of culture and knowledge in practice
• How multi-disciplinary Regenerative Design teams are uniquely positioned to create impact at the community scale
• Redefinition of the timescale for Regenerative Design interventions from short-term to future-forward multi-generational benefit.
Panelists & Guest Speakers Included:
• Yasemin Kologlu, CSU President, Principal & Regenerative Design Director at HKS
• Margaret Waldock, Executive Director, Duke Farms, a Center of the Doris Duke Foundation
• Mark Gardner, President, American Institute of Architects NY
• Frances Bronet, President, Pratt Institute
• H.E.Karen Ong, Deputy Permanent Representative of Singapore to UN
• Lori Ferriss, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Built Buildings Lab
• Mariam Issoufou, Founder, Mariam Issoufou Architects
• Tony Montalto, Chief Design Officer, HKS
• Erin English, Practice Leader, Biohabitats
• Remy Sietchiping, Deputy Director, UN Habitat/UNHSP
• CSU Board Member Naomi Parekh, VP of Membership and Governance
The Regenerative Communities Summit was sponsored by: Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization, UN-Habitat, The Permanent Mission of Singapore to the UN, HKS and by AIA New York and supported by: AIANY Planning & Urban Design, the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, Habitat Professionals Forum for Sustainable Cities, Creative Exchange Lab, Global Urban Development (GUD), and the Columbia University Center for Buildings, Infrastructure & Public Space (CBIPS), and Turkish Women's League of America.
