permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

VILLAGE DESIGN INSTITUTE


Ecovillage Design Course:  July 27 - 31, 2005
at Bodhi Creek Farm, Near Kendall, Washington
Tuition / Faculty / Registration        

Come join us for a transdisciplinary, multidimensional exploration of what 
may be the most important and pressing issue of our time-- how to design 
and implement truly sustainable human habitat. The full-featured 
"ecovillage" - whether urban, suburban, or rural - holds the most promising 
vision for a sustainable future.

Bodhi Creek Farm is nestled within the luxurious, verdant Cascadian 
foothills. The owners there are laying plans for developing a real 
"ecovillage" - in this case, a Sustainability Education and Retreat Center, 
complete with attached co-housing units.

At the Design Course, we'll set up a Design Studio right there on site, 
and, working in design teams, go through the holistic integrated ecovillage 
design process - producing useful and constructive design proposals for our 
'clients' while enjoying a fun and valuable educational experience by all. 
This is applied, experiential, action learning at its best!

Subjects covered include but are not limited to:
Permaculture Fundamentals
Ekistics
Methodologies of Ecological Design and Whole Systems Design
Patterns in Nature
"A Pattern Language," and "Design with Nature,"
Feng Shui and Sacred Geometry
Living Systems Theory
EMergy and Energetics
Community and Environmental Economics
Appropriate Technology
Self-reliant Food Systems
The Global Ecovillage Network
Peak Oil and a Post-carbon Future, etc.
Course Tuition

$200 3-day weekend Design Studio, July 29-31, 2005
$300 Design Studio + Optional 2 additional days preparatory class time, 
July 27-28, 2005 = 5 days total!
20% discount if paid in full by July 1, 2005.

This fee covers camping, three wholesome meals a day, all related course 
materials, and the opportunity to participate in an immersion experience in 
leading edge design work on an actual project-in-process. Course 
participants will be limited to 20, so contact VDI today to reserve a spot, 
or for further inquiry: (360) 927-2224 or ecmare@villagedesign.org.

(Note: Prior Permaculture Design experience preferred)
Faculty

Chris Mare: Founder and Executive Director of VDI; created the world's 
first B.A. degree in Village Design; M.A. Whole systems Design; Ph.D. Human 
and Organization Development (current student); Curriculum Coordinator for 
Global Ecovillage Network

Barbara Widhalm: Founder and President Rebundance Consulting; M.A. in 
Planning, U. of Vienna; Ph.D. Transformative Learning & Change at CIIS 
(current student); member U.S. Coalition of Education for Sustainable 
Development; adjunct faculty U. of New Mexico

Phil Hawes: Project Director for the Global Ecovillage Development 
Corporation; Ph.D. San Francisco Institute of Architecture, where he is 
associate faculty; chief architect Biosphere II; Fellow at Taliesin West; 
design work and consulting internationally

Tyrone LaFay: B.S. Environmental Studies at Huxley College; proprietor 
Earthcare Design Solutions, Inc.; graduate of Planet Organic's Permaculture 
immersion in New Zealand; currently Program Coordinator at O.U.R. 
Ecovillage on Vancouver Island, B.C.

!!Special Guests!!: Alan Seid, Tricia King, Kelly Keane, Nala Walla, Guy 
Burneko
Registration

To register, please fill out the Registration Form from website  and submit 
it with payment (check or money order) to:

Village Design Institute
PO Box 2233
Bellingham, WA 98225

Contact ecmare@villagedesign.org, http://www.villagedesign.org/, 380-927-2224
(note:prior Permaculture Design experience preferred)

You will increase enormously your capacity to live sustainably.

The Village Design Institute (VDI) is an educational nonprofit registered 
in the State of Washington. VDI was founded for the purpose of creating, 
organizing, and disseminating a scientific, multi-disciplinary knowledge 
resource base intended for promoting and facilitating the design and 
implementation of sustainable human settlements for the 21st century. A 
fundamental working premise at VDI - and thus the namesake - is that the 
designing of truly sustainable settlements is most effectively conceived 
and accomplished at village-scale, with all that implies. We have 
elaborated this declaration in an essay entitled “Fundamentals of Village 
Design,” a title that will be expanded into textbook format.

At VDI, we take sustainability seriously, so seriously in fact that we are 
actively moving out of the indigent, 20th century ‘sustainability’ mindset. 
We are beginning to theorize, design, and think in terms of ‘beyond 
sustainability,’ beyond conditions of mere steady-state material 
maintenance to situations where human and planetary potential is being 
actualized – stirring, thriving, flourishing – in full evolutionary 
plenitude. Is it possible to include ‘consciousness expansion’ as a design 
criterion? For more on this perspective see the essays “Sustainability 1” 
and “Sustainability 2.”

At VDI, we believe that the emerging vision of the ‘ecovillage’ is the 
obvious solution to the ecological, economic, cultural, and spiritual 
challenges facing humanity at this dawning of a new millennium. We want to 
take the opportunity top explore ‘ecovillage design’ from a scientific, 
multi-disciplinary, educational perspective. Therefore, VDI defines 
‘ecovillage’ as the sustainable ‘unit’ of human settlement in a theoretical 
ekistics for the 21st century.

The Village Design Institute was conceived and founded because of a 
perceived gap between the attention level of genuine student interest in 
matters of Sustainable Community Design, and the corresponding relative 
absence of such curricula in current Academia. Inspired by such 
distinguished examples as “Living Routes,” the Farm’s “Ecovillage Training 
Center,” and “Crystal Waters College,” VDI is attempting to fill the gap by 
formulating and offering intensive and extensive, leading-edge, high 
quality educational experiences in the multifarious dimensions of this 
emerging new field. VDI will eventually establish and become home to an 
accredited school, an holistic academy devoted to the conceptualization, 
design, and implementation of sustainable human settlements for the 21st 
century. Of course, we use ‘sustainable’ here rhetorically; we’re really 
designing for the ‘evolution of consciousness’ in prosperous condition 
‘beyond sustainability.’

Ecopoiesis can be roughly defined as ‘home making.’ In consensus with the 
related words ecology, economics, ecofeminism, ecosophy, ecovillage, 
ecosystem, etc., the image here is one of returning human livelihood to a 
human scale. The ‘home’ being ‘made’ here is not the center of a nuclear 
family; nor is it a piece of real estate. Home is the encompassing, 
inclusive, co-evolving, greater environment in which one makes a living, 
and engages in the endeavors of raising a family, deriving meaningful work, 
contributing to a community, and entering into a relationship with 
greater-than-Self. In this sense, home cannot be excluded from the greater 
ecological and biospheric realities in which it is embedded. Ecopoiseis, 
then, is consciously creating a mutually beneficial relationship between 
the human community and the natural world. And, ecopoiesis is best 
conceived and designed at village-scale.

...if it ain't fun it ain't sustainable-- plan on having fun!!!!