On the board now

What we are designing right now.

Six live projects across the five things we do. This is the practice in motion rather than a menu of what it could take on — drawings on the table this month across California, Costa Rica and Guatemala, at every stage from first site read to crews on the ground.

The pipeline

Six projects, in design this month.

Every one of them started the same way: someone with land, a question about what it could carry, and a plan that had to survive contact with water, budget and a growing season.

Education and documentation

Katherine Michiels School

In development

A design for an edible schoolyard with educational programming: a working growing area built to teach from, the kitchen it feeds, and the curriculum that runs on both.

Our partDesign of the schoolyard and the kitchen, and the programme written so their own staff can teach it after we leave.
Regenerative retrofitting

Granja Tz’ikin

Tzununá, Lake Atitlán, Guatemala

A farm and farm-to-table restaurant already running, re-read system by system and re-tuned — water, beds, composting and the line between what the farm grows and what the kitchen serves.

Our partDesign plus the software it runs on: orders, kitchen and the farm’s own record-keeping in one place, built for this business rather than bought off a shelf.
Homestead development

Sunstone

Grass Valley, California

Forty acres becoming a retreat and permaculture farm, already underway and going in by hand, with the food, water and energy systems designed into the ground rather than added to it later, around fire-resilient design and ecological restoration.

Our partThis one is ours. Sunstone is the regenerative demonstration farm our own general contractor, Gardner Fenton Goetze, is developing on his own land — the method at full scale, built by the licence that can build it for you anywhere in California.
Market gardens and regenerative retrofitting

Eden

Atenas, Costa Rica

A working guest property with the food system designed into what is already there: the garden sized to the kitchen it feeds, and the existing water and structures re-read before anything new is drawn.

Our partThe design, the element-by-element costing, and the operating documentation a small team can actually run the place on.
Regenerative retrofitting and market gardens

Stone house and lodge

Nevada City, California

A historic stone house and lodge brought back into use, with a market garden and a food forest designed into the grounds rather than added beside them, and the existing building and its systems re-read before anything new is drawn.

Our partThe retrofit design, the market garden and food forest, and a licensed California build team that can put the work in the ground.
Market gardens

Undisclosed market garden

Under agreement

Further market garden opportunities are being designed for clients who have asked not to be named while they are in design. They will appear here as they are cleared to.

Our partSite read, zone plan, water strategy, planting schedule and the yield model that shows it paying for itself.
Work already in the ground →
How we stay in it

The drawing is where we start, not where we stop.

A plan nobody on site understands becomes a plan nobody follows. So the engagement carries past the drawings, and on most of these projects it already has.

That last one comes from having built it before. The software behind a working farm-to-table business — orders, kitchen, and what the farm sends up — is running at Granja Tz’ikin today, written by the collective for that business.

Education and documentation →
Start

There is room on the board.

Tell us what you are working with. It takes under two minutes.