Designers, builders, engineers, educators and chefs in one practice. We provide security and opportunity through regenerative design, and the thoughtful reimagination of broken systems.
All of our designs come from the confluence of data science and ancient wisdom.
read by the instruments · drawn by people who have farmed
See how it was drawn →We are a design practice. You pay us for the plan: drawn, costed, phased and buildable. In most cases we never need to set foot on your property. Building it is a separate decision, made with licensed partners when you are ready.
Food systems sized to the site and costed to pay for themselves, at any scale from a courtyard to four acres.
Raw land to a place that feeds the people on it: water, shelter, food and energy planned as one system.
A property that already exists, brought back into productive harmony. Every system re-read and re-tuned.
Water treatment, waste strategy and town-scale compost. Proposals, feasibility and design for the places that serve everyone.
We teach you to run and maintain what we designed, we write it all down, and we stay on the line.
We give you the fish, and we teach you how. You run it, and we stay on the line.
How each engagement works →Designers, builders, engineers, educators and chefs who work as one practice instead of competing for the same jobs. Profits return to community benefit and land trusts. A growing network of held property supporting seed security, biodiversity, food and water security, and reserves for living, education and hospitality.
You direct the vision; the ethics keep every choice honest. Whoever is right for your project leads it, and everyone else is behind them.
The people who carry the work →Five rules we actually keep. Each one has a decision behind it you can go and check.
Neal has spent years designing and building with Mayan communities around Lake Atitlán. That is the work itself, not outreach bolted onto a commercial project. The school programme teaches children to grow food before anyone tries to sell their parents anything.
Design lives people can sustain.
Regenerating systems rather than replacing them, and treating waste as a material that has not found its use yet. On several sites that has meant trash going into super-adobe structures instead of into a truck.
Leave the ground better than the drawing found it.
Surplus food goes to the community around the site, and every planting plan carries more than the client needs. The extra rows are for pollinators.
Return the surplus.
Every choice on the drawing gets one question first: how many problems does this single move solve? A swale stores water, stops erosion, feeds a hedgerow and carries a path. One move, four problems.
One move, four problems.
We are not in the business of strong-arming people into our design choices. We are in the business of presenting better options, and then working with what you actually need.
We present better options and work with what you need.
The same six steps at every scale, from a courtyard to a municipal water system. Every project requires a different level of engagement. The standard does not change.
Start where it's easy, grow as the land improves itself.
What each person opens for the project in front of them.
Click any project to open the drawing read: what was flown, what was decided, and what was delivered. The plan is the product.
Six projects in design right now, across the five things we do. This is what the practice is actually doing, not a menu of what it could.
However you found your way here, you're right on time. This takes under two minutes.
We'll write back ourselves, and it will read like a conversation.
