Eco-Village Design Planning: An Ideal Build Order

Planning for the Design of the Ideal Eco-Village

This is the build order for a medium-sized Eco-Village as part of the ongoing Atitlan Alliance Eco Village design education articles in collaboration with BrainHive Green Business Planning. In this article we will explore how we can quickly activate any piece of land and find a secure and cost-efficient path that will lead to maximum productivity fast, safely and elegantly.

We are assuming that the land is not too far off the grid and we are assuming that we are in a temperate zone where we do not have to plan for snowloads, crass seasonal temperature differences or security issues. The way a piece of land is developed is very important because sometimes you can block your own path of development or you can erect structures that you will regret later. You have to fill up the land piece by piece, creating the access, creating the perimeter, designating the material drop-offs and storages, placing pilot structures (like parking, storage or tool shed) and then creating the sanitary and eventually residential structures that will support the first exploration and pioneer construction team.

The locations, dimensions and interconnectedness of the first pieces of infrastructure on your land really show how much rational thought the designer brought towards the creation right from the very beginning. It will dictate much of the latter creation if the initial spaces are too cramped or give no ability to evolve capacities as the more sophisticated structures are added. That is why we took the time to collect here at BrainHive in this article our best ideas for the Atitlan Alliance from the last half decade of living nearby some of the true pearl projects of the permaculture and organic construction sphere here at the Atitlan Lake in Guatemala.

Eco-Village Development Phase #1: Bare Necessities

As already outlined above the initial build order will depend on the size of the land, of the point of access and whether or not we are building in a secure location or whether we have to be careful and we cannot deploy certain tools and machineries before the land was elevated to a higher degree of security.
However the most elemental items on our list are relatively intuitive to grasp and they are as follows without further elaboration so that we can move on to the more delicate and less elemental topics of this article because we are also wanting to talk to the veterans out there.
You will have on your land different accesses for motor vehicles, but also water and power, sometimes internet or satellite vectors that can be connected and that depending on all the traffic, the pipe pressure and the availabilities of signal you can arrange the first structures in such a way that you are almost automatically shown where to put your paths, gates and maneuvering spaces and which surface areas of the land need to be fortified for heavy duty use.
You often have to dig out the tubes, the septics and other drainage and connection lines as the most prior consideration. Very similarly you will also have to plan for the invisible utility grid inside your land before you set many foundations, place many columns, create concrete stairs or set down in fact any heavier construction that requires pouring concrete. You can also have a good look at your land and see where you need to combat erosion, where there are old or sick trees as well as in the case of natural water bodies where we can expect changes happening in the land over time and passing the seasons.
All of these things should be aspects to consider when you are creating your impact real estate development plan build order. The least distance that the work teams, the maintenance staff and the residents have to walk everyday over underdeveloped trails to follow their tasks can over the transcourse of the years create either flow structure or energetic resistance (stagnant) structure that can sometimes even create surprising consequences like insect problems.
A badly executed build order or a wrongly conceptualized one can lead to negative emotions to come through in workers and users and if not tackled infuse into all the other type of productive work that has to happen before an Eco Village can manifest in any given place of the world. And so the pioneer buildings that have to do with utilities, security, human hygienic needs and first workers camps cannot be taken as just a transient phase of the construction but rather they are expression of how the land is opened.
They should be reflecting the natural build orders that nature shows us when it unrolls, unfurls, spreading in fanning fashion its veins and feelers into the most appropriate crevasses of possible growth, building up the nutrient paths and the metabolism, the processing plants and the circulatory systems into the world and letting them hold on to the matter and the space around it.
There is a lot of beauty and a lot of ruggedness that we can express through the way we touch the land when we walk into it the first time, when we cut down the plants that we know must go and when we plug in the posts of our fences. These are special moments and every big root, every giant bolder and every moist patch that we encounter along the way offers a puzzle piece revealing the story that the land tells us of how it wants to be developed: where it will be yielding and friendly to our purpose and intent, and where it will resist us, cost us or possibly hurt us if we drill into the wrong spot, overextend, gamble or lean against the wind.
From pioneering to purposing: what dictates the 2nd phase build order “activation”?
Once the pioneer structures are set down you are well advised to already have a business plan ready for the Eco Village to know the expected number of constant inhabitants, to know what kind of impact businesses are to be incubated and what is the budget that has to be at the minimum for this activation phase of the construction.
This is the middle phase between the pioneer phase and the coronation phase. In this phase what matters most is that you can roll out the further build plans with a permanent team that is inhabiting the pioneer structures. They will typically have at their fingertips more complex and heavier machinery, there will be some sort of grid services available or off-grid capacities either ready or in course of being ready. We are slowly being able to scale the work output of every member of the development team. In this phase we are all about creating the communal structures and adding on residency.
There is a certain proportionate acceleration at which we are also expanding the utilities and sanitary spaces to make sure that the structures that we add on have enough room and we are creating a more and more comfortable and spacious property. If the land is very big we might at first only have fenced in part of it and now we are segmenting and preparing more of the land. We are doing certain access work setting paths, stairs and possibly bridges or plank an incline so that also we are able to pull in all the available building material which is on the land. First terracing might be happening at this point with hillside land.
We are starting to designate plantation space as we are whacking down the vegetation that we do not need so that we do not dry out the mycelium in the soil or commit other types of errors against the spirit of the land which may come back to haunt us or slow our stride as we are activating the entire piece to create resources according to our plan. Agroforestry permaculture principles are heeded, living fences and trailsides may be planted.
In the activation phase we are making sure that we are documenting everything that we are doing to attract people to come and help to fill up the early offerings. Sometimes before a piece of land that is turned into an Eco Village becomes fully developed it will carry a certain spirit in parts of it and so it is for the early residents to enjoy and make record of the entirety of the story that the land is telling. It will create digital assets that will be used for marketing and to tell instructions to the first facilitators that will start living in the different energetic spots where the development team decides to set down the appropriate structures.
It is very assuring when in the activation phase all the different principles of energetic architecture are followed so that no views are barred or nodes are occupied that will congest, distress or weaken fabric of nature and create microclimates that are not fully feasible for the impact purpose and regenerative pursuit of an real estate development plan build order that is in alignment with greater design higher. Insects, erosion, troubled sleep, intruders and government inspector or neighbor resistance among a host of other specters come to bug and pester builders and interest holders of badly designed villages.
Typical structures that are typically added on in the activation phase beyond simply food preparation, materials processing and communal assembly halls can be offices/receptions/co-working/learning space, waiting areas, initial multipurpose spaces for storing, heating, drying, safekeeping or baking and additional levels on the pioneer buildings that are to accommodate either training, gathering or first aid and special materials storages. Sometimes pump houses, generator houses, strong box arrays or distributor/switch boxes have to be added on as miscellaneous constructions.
Green houses, animal coops, vigilante animal huts and composts/recycling processing are starting to be seen in this phase, also more terracing, ordering of the land in terms of rocks, tree stumps / old and sick trees, sunfall path and the greater other vector lines that determine the openings and reinforcing of different structures are happening. Because build order can also mean how buildings are placed facing each other and facing the energetic vectors we make sure that the entire Eco Village we end up with is a true sculpture and hub for healthy and productive living. This is probably the most important and tricky face because we are also have a chance to undo errors made in the pioneer phase but we are definitely spending the most money that we need until the Eco Village can carry itself and so it is in this phase that often the developers encounter problems and the designers blow up their budgets and the whole project comes to a grinding halt before it ever had a chance to shine.

Phase 3: The Coronation

We have created the belly and engine of the Eco Village in the pioneer phase and made muscle and metabolism as well as the heart and passion of the village in the activation phase.

Now it is time for the voice and face, the more filigraneous and glamorous, sparkling and outstanding structures to emerge as part of the sort of Eco Village that is meant to impact the world. In this phase we will be talking about adding structures that make the intentional community village unique and that compliment the body and the heart with a sense of higher perception, reflection and radiance and to give the face of the village eyes and brains to help it empower its residents and create ever more safety and abundance for the greater sphere as a whole.

We are talking about adding on more complex laboratory space, high-tech printing and incubation stations, virtual reality and computing power, shroom labs and complex medicine production and processing capacities. In this phase we are adding on luxurious replenishing spa areas, cosmetics, ceremonial and wellness application interior design equipped hyper-decorated temple spaces and Kirtan/dances room, we are adding yoga platforms, shrines, fountains, foto points and monuments.
We are painting and we are creating mosaics of our kitchens, our libraries and workshop space look full of splendor as every piece of furniture and every curtain, every cover and every finishing touch adds to the perfection of the village and it will become a true work of art with not a speck of unloved area within. But that is not all what the coronation phase is all about.
While we are building outward creating the face of the Eco Village, from the inside we are also crowning the other values and characteristics of the entire person that is reflected through the collective will of the inhabitants of the Eco Village. Among the tribe that stands by the totem the designer erected, now we should find many a brilliant facilitator, multiplier / influencer or nomad entrepreneur or other more permanent forms or impact entrepreneurships.
Together they create an energy cosmos that is either programmed for abundance, harmony and the opening of the individual to invite their highest purpose into their lives – or it is a place of gossip, filthy, druggy and disrespecting, where quarrel, contamination and paralysis in lethargy and discord rule supreme and we are stuck with the wrong things built and immense investment necessary to create a new plan because either there was no plan or it was a bad plan.
I’m saying this and I’m going so far into the warning about what a bad build order can mean for a project because we have seen it before and land cannot be wasted. Letting land or material go to waste is the immediate consequence of bad build orders and it is that the wrong types of energy can settle in a place that has not been developed with love and clarity as guiding principles of all more tangible manifestation happening there in.
That construction affects us all and the sealing of land, the removal of wrong types of vegetation (just think of the bees disaster) and the sprawling of construction is costing fertility, diversity and human life by the influx of greater and lesser impacts. Walking assured in the blessings bestowed upon designers that use the most appropriately resilient design will shape our decision making as ecovillage planners for years and possibly decades to come. As we are toiling to reverse the effects of the great shift teams and networks of regenerative impactpreneurs want to come together to cooperate out of sheer self interest, to assure their survival, financially and literally.
The coronation therefore is also to make the creation safe and to add armor and spikes as the evolution and developments of our environment teach us what nooks and crannies of the land are inviting our special attention. Because when we are hosting the finest of our sphere we want to make sure that their laptops don’t disappear that potentially carry the blueprints for products and hyper important intelligence. Adding tens of thousands of dollars worth of tech merits they use of a certain amount of dollars to make sure we always know where it is and it never goes towards feeding those who like to attack the shiniest crowns of creation because of their inability to understand what worth and value is brought to the greater hole by the substation and substantiation of communally used assets to leverage and maintain, scale and foster the impact of those who understand the order of how the New Earth will want to be built.
Conclusion: a handy dandy, bendy candy build plan for Eco villages
Those who decide to step into the ultimate responsibility to be the architects of the resilience hubs of the New Earth will from the earliest moment onward be invited to know where every pebble wants and has to to go as land is acquired, opened and put to use in harmony with higher objectives of the greater movement.
Only watching each other go in select their pieces and bring an organism into alignment we can truly achieve our highest potential and therefore it should become the most basic knowledge in the world of how to find, assess and execute the most appropriate build order for every piece of land that we can lay our shovels on.
It will be so very important to not lose tools because of early tool sheds getting robbed, having to tear down structures made with natural materials that were not secured or treated in time against insects or the teeth of seasons or have to go through the ordeal of ripping up cemented paths, block walls and stairs because otherwise utility lines would be ugly visible or unrunnable and the lack of finishing makes visitors not return.
The bleeding out of resin from the wood, the growing of mold, moss and algae or the washing of rain that comes down hard in places we misplanned drainage come back around to bite us if we neglect the work of producing most ideal build orders. Of course build orders can be very flexible and the land sometimes gives you cues how a build order has to be malleable as you dig and explore, listen to the wind every night and count the different forms of intrusion or calls from the outside that teach you in what way the land and the structures need to be fortified or stretched.
To make sure that the entire village can ascend and stand as citadel to be a place of sanctum and shelter for the best of our sphere. To come through and create amazing products and services and the reputation to blossom throughout our greater awareness alongside the different movements that I’ve learned to love life lived enhanced by the instrument of an ideal Eco Village set into the right corner of the Earth.