Shelter II

Place context

We choose 50 urban persons that, in a context of crisi decide to leave their town and create a little village.
This village will be located in the middle of nowhere, in a warm and dry climate, surrounded by hills.
The aim of the founders of the village is to be self-sufficients. That means that they will need water, wood and food sources to survive.
For water sources we will need the proximity of a river or to build a pit.
We need to have a forest around the village to obtain wood for constructions and heat.
To obtain food we will need to have fields and space farm animals.
Also buildings for the storage of the food.

What happens when a group of 50 people leaves a big city full of crisis and find a new place for living?

Young group of people lives in a big city full of crisis and they are not satisfied. Their relations are poor. They have no time for each other. They are disgusted by the society. So they decide to find a new place for living. There are many new tasks and problems to solve.

People know each other so how much of their own private place do they need? Our theme for work is to create good public space when they can meet and spend time together. This new shelter have to react to needs of people.

What they are going to do? They have to work for getting some food. But having fun is also important. So it's necessary for them to looking forward to something they are going to do together and learn how to cooperate.

This group is quite isolated, in the middle of nowhere so they should find a way how to live with nature and increase a relationship with it. Use it but not destroy it.

Relation is a complex question.

How to endure anarchy in a completly decentralized society through self-motivation?

The true social problem in an isolated, small-scale society is to endure it, to maintain the well-being and the trust between it's members.

Without law enforcement, only respect and education reign supreme.

It's begining to seem ever more plausible to establish a scenario where society is in its utmost stressful state, where there is a complete lack of faith in the government, where there is a complete waste of resources and no sustainable management to compensate for the everlasting, always exponential consumerism and wastefulness.

What if we broke this cycle with a new paradigm?

Out of the current democratic systems that rule the western civilizations, none seem to escape the clutches of corporate greed and the ever increasing weight of the influence of the market's instability.

So we are searching for a governing model that will not base itself on the same premisses of the current ones. We do not seek a centralized industry and governing system.
Which means we need to develop a new human network, made possible by the new social-tecnological tools available, a grid of relationships which can adapt to the smaller-scale needs of the populous, without the need of international agents to interfere with people's everyday life.

We are talking about small clusters of participatory members of a decentralized society, using the highest technologies available to sustain them in the smallest industry possible, scaled to their needs.

Let's sketch an utopian village, where there are no laws and no need for them.
Trust shall be the law, and respect shall be the currency.
You could call it a peaceful anarchy.

We propose an experiment. To prove if an all-around self-sustainable society with no monetary system, no law enforcement and no centralized government or industry actually works.
Psicological studies indicate that people learn better through examples.
Why not make an example-society?
How will the test of time prove this model wrong?
And if it is flawed, does it have a simple set of solutions, or are educated masses and mutual respect needed for this standard of living too irrealistic for the real world?

Time is the ultimate judge of this all, but we have to be smarter than time, we have to think of ways of assuring the infrastructures and the social fabric of this all could actually work to assure the members of these clusters worked together and not against the common goals.
This is our problem, one we shall solve with the relashionships between public and private spaces, with the relashion between nature's setting and the human psyche and the building of a shelter that can be home to all of this.

SUSTAINABLE CITY AUTO-SUFFICIENT

Our project consists basically in the development of a new core of population which could be absolutelly independet and auto-efficient in different aspects as energy, food and waste distribution, and everything in a ecological way.
The action of this project to limit it, it would be to provide and design all the public areas and services which are necessary in every city or town ( storage of food-water, workplaces, electricity distribution…) but in this case it will be totally determined by the constraints which are given by the focus of our project, the independence. To develop and building all the infrastructure and also the areas according to the organization we also have to think about the materials we can achieve from the area.
This project tries to show a good alternative against the typical capitalist-centralized service system which is present in all the developed countries.

To invest in an utopic model of society, one has to deconstruct the value system in human interactions and find the fatal flaws that lead to negative emotions and find ways of resolving them, diverting those energies to positive stimuli.

"The man is wolf to man" - Hobbes

One creates this assumption because people have always been in the pursuit of ones own safety, putting one's self before all others.
The thing is, whilst man is man's greatest foe, man is also his own best ally.

Human beings are social beings which cannot survive longer periods of time without interaction. The question is, how to quell negative interactions.

The answer is in a philosofical view of life:
If we'd all be in the same boat, all know each other and share the same limitations and freedom in this small scale, who would actually have jealousy of someone else?
There'd be no material posessions to distinguish one from another, there'd be no reason to steal, there'd be no reason to disrupt the natural flow of actions.

And if there would be any disruption, the whole community, as a caring, nurturing force, would think together on a way of solving the issue with trust, and not violence or punishment.

Most of all psicological disorders and negative emotions stem from the lack of love in the upbringing and growth of a person.
In a caring, trustful, simple and small-scale habitat, most problems would not even occur.

The problem that arises from not having a differentiated wage or any sort of individual stimuli is the lack of purpose in work.

How does one develop purpose?

The answer is both in the collective sense and in the individual.

If we were considering a model where machinery was doing most of the work (between 70%-97% with current technologies, with no fear of technological unemployment), there'd be few working hours, but a problem shall always still surge from the lack of a material incentive: Why work when no one trumps no one?

Even if the work hours could be as low as one hour per day, we could assume a system of trust where a certain task is not given to one sole member of the group, but a group of them.

Tasks would not be equally distributed. The tasks would fit the vocation of the one doing them. And even so, not only that one person, but a group of people who would take accountability for the action itself.

The workflow distribution can be announced on a unified platform. Consider it a "facebook for the work tasks and projects".
Some technological solution which would put the tasks up for anyone to fulfill them, then distribute them between the people who would not mind to take accountability for them.

This all seems utopian in a sense, but we're talking about low necessity workflows. Most work done would be vocational-based and not necessity-based.

Psycologically, there are studies to be made in this area, technologically, we have the means:
http://www.joomla.org/

How can children have a place in this community?

Children are a very important part in alls communities all around the world, because they will be the future of the community. Their success will determinate the survival of the community.
In consequence education is one of the primary things to solve.
We are thinking about use some rooms of the public of the public building as classrooms. We must separate at least 2 age strips ( maybe 3). With the small size of our village we are thinking of a a maximum of 10-15 children. The first for the youngest childs ( 2-6 years) and at least other with the rest.
Two adults, with teacher studies will learn individually with the childs of the groups and stimulate in each one either the knowledges that the kid want to know and those that he isn't interesting him.

For the entertainment and the free time of the kids, we haven't space constraint because we have infinite places to build playgrounds.
Depending on the weather, a outside playground will be necessary for the summer time. In the winter, the rooms used as classrooms can easily be used has playrooms.

questions from other groups

How do you choose that 50 persons?
We don’t choose anyone. It’s just a group of people that are disgusted by the city full of crisis. We don’t say who can go and who doesn’t. We just create a situation that this young group of people konw each other from work or neighbourhood.

Can you communicate with other or just live in very small community?
Of course if you want to. It is not a crazy isolated community that don't know other people. It's a group of people that know each other and decided to live somewhere else. It depends on their resources and their technology. We are not talking about middle age society. They’ll have possibilites to communicate if they’ll want to.

Have you thought of building notes collecting system to take advantage of the rain. Because if it is a very dry place, droughts could hit the village
Yes, of course. It’s one of our main factor of being able to live without civilisation. Nowadays we have much knowledge about being independent. You collect energy and heat from sun, water and ground. And it’s really elementary thing to collect rain water in tanks and use it after. It’s part of our plans.

http://www.tamera.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/
http://www.tromsite.com/
http://www.thenzp.com/default.aspx
http://www.thevenusprojectdesign.com/

Have you thought of having a hierarchy whiten the community to get the objectives developed?

Our community are made of a small group of persons that already knows the others. They were friends, relatives and work mates.
They decided to leave their normal lives and create and independent community. Even if they have took this hard decision, for their continuity as part of the community they have to feel that they are doing something good and practical that will make their lives better.
With this scenario, the better way to manage the community and to achieve the objectives is a democratic assembly, due to the reduced size of the community.
The public building will be used regularly for these assembly, where the problems and news of the community will be exposed.
For resolve the problems of the community, smaller groups will be created. These groups will be focused en the several activities, like energy, food supply, education, etc.
This way the is not a hierarchy like in work world, but several groups, where they can be movement and people can change between groups.

standing on time-Nowadays-Technical background- Massice migration

QUESTIONS
1.How long does the new comunity can exist?
2. Do you really think it is still possible nowadays to develop this kind of life without the standards type of life?
3. You are creating a new society. In case that happens to be successful, new people will want to join. In case it doesn´t work people may want to leave that society. My question is: How would you manage migration flows?
4. Who is going to develop the industry needed for making for example a light or a truck? How would they manage that with just fifty people?
ANSWERS
1. The new community is based in trustful between people who has the same goal, in other case to create a new society like this it would be impossible to achieve. So based on that idea, we know and we are supposing that we will find the perfect task and logistical distribution for making the proper working of this society. So if something happens that can destroy this society or his normal working will be an external event that is over the population core control. They know their place because they have made the shelter according to their needs. So it can exist and grows and they will modify the organization according to the own evolution, so it can exist as long as an extraordinary event happens. If a catastrophic event appears, for instance an attacked for burglars or terrorists, or an earthquake or flood, whatever that cannot be prevented in advanced in the current flow of the usual life, it can finish this society, but they will be external reasons, and there is no responsibility about that on the creator´s (responsible) of the idea.
2. We are completely sure not only that it´s possible, but it will happen this kind of society.
The base of this foundation is to escape from the standards prototype of life which are established in all the capitalist-developed countries, and as we said to make a context they have failed because of different reasons as pollution, high different between poor-rich people, financial crisis…
So a change will happen, and like all the important changes that happen in the history they begin in small isolated cores, and they developed their selves in the way that they feed from their welfare profits. The population will be the origin of a new standard of life.
3. This new project will be developed by itself. First we know the place, the geographic area, dry with hills for example, second we study our possibilities there, according to the second one we will make the third one and more important making a good plan about how will be the shelter that will cover all the needs from the inhabitants and we will modify it for that goal. After that the society we will be developing according to the progress that they will experience, if they increased population they will extend the households, they will make bigger the different services, but they always maintain their spirit, and their fundament in this development. It won´t be a messy increase of population, because population need housing, and there is no space in this community for private companies with liberalism policies which will corrupt this society. Everything will be natural as the human organism, and the growth from the kid to the ancient.
So this society in case an emergency event will happen there will be a connection with the general networks, as I explained before this evolution will be made in correspondence with the growth of the city.
4. This is according to my point of view the most difficult to manage, for me as an engineer this is the area in which I have more dudes and I am open to any suggestions. I cannot visualize the way of being able to produce all the pieces necessary to build all the devices or technology, services in general that we are used to in our life and they provide to us the welfare.
So looking forward an optimal solution for this according to the spirit that we have shown in our topic (auto-efficient), I think that we will decide what is completely possible to develop to satisfy needs in the most environmental way avoiding the use of the available technology we know, and for the rest take (buying, because even if it´s a kind of ecological proposition it will need a high investment for buying the area, urbanism, and the conditioning of the area) the pieces and devices from the present companies and industry, but reducing their consumption as the minimum as possible.
Maybe it could be possible a natural development of the industry as we expect from the society and infrastructure networks and relationship.

One possible solution for a community of 50 people with a need for the same standard of living is to build their own industry in simple ways like as posed here: http://opensourceecology.org/

To further adapt the shape of the small-scale city to any given environment, we adopted a model based on bio-mimicry and, more precisely, the water lily.

Be it land or water, there is a plant which takes a shape and a function that overrides the geographical context and can be placed wherever you need it. The water lily.

To make a sustainable model which can adapt to any given location, we thought about the circular, radial urban development plans, which have been seen throughout utopian visionary drawings across the ages.
But what would we do with the given knowledge we have now?

Taking note of the different capitals across the world, with their height developing in the midst of some downtowns, we notice that at the heart of each city, height rises and density soars.

Accounting for the circular two-dimensional shape, the density variations and the need to develop this model on any type of land mass or ocean, we're utilizing the shape of the water lily flower on top of it's leaf, taking urban development to the seas, being the most effective we can be.