Our co-creation process is founded on listening and learning from elders, knowledge keepers, community members and youth. We share our skills to create spaces imbued with meaning and cultural resonance. We identify the synergies between indigenous tectonics and contemporary building techniques to showcase the sophistication of traditional strategies in a fresh way employing the latest in cutting edge technologies. This synthesis of traditional wisdom and high performance building results in deeply sustainable, highly resilient, authentic communities interwoven seamlessly and symbiotically with Mother Earth.
We can assist in place making by mapping out a regenerative and culturally resonant Community Plan. We create Compelling Net Zero Designs that include strategies for Food and Water Security as well as Energy Sovereignty such as earth sheltered green houses and building integrated solar optimized community spaces. Our multidisciplinary integrated design team includes architects, designers, structural and mechanical engineers, energy modelers, ecologists and professional grant writers. If you wish to inquire about these services, please contact us here. We look forward to learning about how we can support your community.
We employ earth centred Permaculture Design to map the natural energy flows and metabolism of the site. We orchestrate synergies between the crops to ensure that soil fertility is continuously being replenished naturally. Learning from the wisdom of Indigenous cultivation systems such as the Three Sisters, our plant guilds foster mutually beneficial relationships such as nitrogen fixing, soil moisture retention and natural weed and pest suppression. Inspired by the multiple layers of an ecosystem, our food forests produce more calories per acre than monocultures. They are also less susceptible to parasites. We promote and design Earth Sheltered green houses to extend growing potential year-round and to assist with the heating of adjacent buildings. Our landscape designs restore indigenous biodiversity and create delightful foraging trails.
We use a diversity of strategies to harvest and store water on site. Carefully designed earthworks allow us to slow the flow of water through the site to prevent soil erosion and reduce irrigation requirements. This strategy augments infiltration which replenishes soil moisture and recharges the water table. This is most important in coastal areas to prevent salt infiltration in the water table. All of our supplemental irrigation strategies are water and energy efficient.
Passive strategies such as Earth Tubes and Geo-piles temper our buildings naturally and provide a baseline both for cooling and heating to reduce energy consumption and operational costs. Our structures and buildings are solar optimized to ensure that the energy production is in sync with building use.