Monthly Archives: July 2013
Circle Way Camp shows how to tribe up your village
Back in July, participants from Sweden and Denmark gathered for the annual Circle Way camp hosted by Manitonquat, a Native American who bases his teachings on traditional tribal ways. The camp, held at the Mundekulla conference center, has been going for some 11 years now. This year for the first time they were joined by […]
Brazilian town shows way to sustainable culture with arts and crafts
They started to interact with the local community to design and manufacture decorative artworks almost entirely from recyclable materials such as used wood, wood reclaimed from old houses, cans, paper, etc. Toti trained a group of craftsmen, getting them to produce pieces of art according to his designs as they learned each technique. No design […]
Sustainable, intentional communities: open world villages
The vision is simple: if everyone lived in intentional, sustainable communities – villages, city/town blocks – then the whole world would be sustainable. Supporting that vision is the Open World Villages networking site, newly launched by the Open World Foundation. Based on the powerful NING platform, the site is bringing together experts in their field […]
On the history of Swedish co-housing
This blog from the Cooperative BANK, JAKs, summer seminar, is in English; most people in Sweden are familiar with HSB but co-operative co-housing is not as widespread in many other countries. For Transitioners this form of co-housing maybe offers possibilities to build or convert apartment buildings to be run on renewable energy, to recycle nutrients […]
Living on biomass only: a thought experiment
Let’s suppose we design a society to live on biomass only. What sources do we have available and how are we going to divide the uses of that biomass to get the most out of it? And if there is a lot of carbon in the atmosphere will we still need to carbon compensate and […]
Visit report: eco-centre, Ipema, Brazil
We visited IPEMA – Institute of Permaculture and Eco-village of the Atlantic Rainforest. The center is an example of the growing energy and insight that is manifesting itself as practical projects and organisations working towards sustainability in Brazil. Combining permaculture and eco-village thinking, the center has made huge headway in creating housing of 100% […]
New Eco-village design
This new design (Click on it to see a larger image) is a first sketch for the assignment to design a village layout for a project in Brazil, a village that will house a conference centre in the middle of six sustainable farms. The centre and village will get its food (and coffee) from the […]
Eco-villages are your best investment
Despite the widely held faith in the efficiency of free markets, the industrial capitalist model has arguably failed to deliver. Specifically, it fails to provide lasting economic security, food and shelter to large percentages of the world population. Furthermore, despite being blessed with the easy availability of massive amounts of fossil fuel, many countries are […]
Eco-units settlement design 