Starting with a basic rectangle or square for the primary house component, we are designing add on modules for additional living space, expansion nooks and dormers, and creative entrances. The design process will be a simple procedure of choosing your primary component and add on choices. The next step is completion of architectural drawings, with any additional custom features, from which the SIPs will be fabricated complete with window and door openings for quick construction.

Besides a turn key  construction option, we will also be offering the package with consultation services for an owner built home. Additionally the package will be available to construct on your lot wherever you chose to build.

Contact me for more information

After a long wait, it has now been several weeks since we finalized the closing of 2 pieces of property in west Asheville. It is a beautiful 3 1/4 acre site, with an existing house, that we plan to develop into a small “intentional neighborhood” with 9 more house. We have started with preliminary design parameters for small green built homes, and are enthusiastically moving forward on many fronts.

The plan includes a cluster of 5 homes on the wooded section, leaving almost an acre of rolling wooded land in it’s natural state for a shared park-like area. Another 4 smaller homes will be clustered on a sunny hill, facing an open area that is perfect for a community garden. The existing house will serve as shared space for a variety of community oriented needs and interests.

We will be developing a cooperative oriented legal structure that provides personal ownership of an individual home and building site, along with common ownership of the rest. We plan to incorporate the tools we use for communication and decision making into our home owner agreements to nurture a culture of empathy and collaboration. See our other website, A CoCreative Path, for more information.

We hope to have our conceptual plans ready in May and to break ground on the first house this summer. The plans will provide parameters for creative and environmentally responsible design, with complete flexibility for personal needs and expression. I will be posting plan updates as they are completed.

If you would like to explore joining us on this journey (or know someone who would), contact us soon – there are only 9 building sites left  Stay tuned for project development – sign up at the right to be first to receive updates and for our occasional newsletter.

Join us for a monthly educational and networking meeting in Asheville to explore, dream, and design new opportunities for building community in a variety of urban and rural settings.

The focus of this meetup is related to skills and resources for successful relationships as well and to explore specific projects. We also focus on forming, networking, and nurturing self-organized groups related to your “niche” community.

Join us in this focus to co-create a new environment, culture, economy, and story.

Continued meetings are on the fourth Wednesday of the month and includes a featured topic, group discussions, and networking opportunities. We also showcase projects and services to help you prepare, find, and co-create your community.

This meetup is a collective effort hosted by the newly forming Center for Collaborative Innovation. Contact Laurie at Habitat Re-Imagined: laurie.czecholinski@gmail.com, or call 828-778-0461 for further information

Connect casually before the meeting and enjoy a delicious and healthy meal at Earth Fare. Please RSVP at Conscious Relationships

I recently finished a new website to communicate the process I use to help nurture conscious and collaborative relationships. This process is a synthesis of components that, together, create the magic of the Alchemy of Collaboration.

The medieval Alchemist stood at the crossroad of a shifting world view. Their experiments in science were rooted in ancient understandings of spirituality which eventually gave way to the “age of enlightenment”. Their goal was to refine gold from base metals and to find the elixir that would prolong life. Their intuition was focused on higher values and the enhancement of life, but their primitive spirituality gave way to the “reason” of a new era.

Today we are at another crossroads. This time, we are shifting from the “age of reason” and it’s Darwinian focus on competition for the “survival of the fittest” to a focus on collaboration for the well being of all. We are taking the best of science and finding a spirituality rooted in our common longing and need. Once again, our intuition is focused on higher values and the enhancement of life – for all.

The Alchemy of Collaboration is the empowerment created through a synthesis of collaborative tools. These tools focus on cultivating the essential components of interpersonal awareness, conscious communication, graceful agreement, participatory decision making, and conflict transformation. Through this process of community building, our goal is to refine the gold in relationships and enhance the life in organizations. Through the magic of synergy, we can help facilitate a shift to a new era of enlightenment – to a co-creative path and a future of empowered collaboration.

For the rest of the story, please visit www.acocreativepath.com

Mouse over the pictures, then click to see the picture and pattern it represents on the Natural Homes Facebook page. From there, you can follow links to the house the picture came from.

Enjoy the inspiration!

One of my favorite circle images is a “wheel” representing the  Wellness Inventory developed by John Travis MD, founder of one of the first holistic wellness centers in the country. The inventory expands the basic three into twelve areas of consideration for personal well being. These areas go deeper into our human need and include our relationship with others

I recently came across another circle, a spiral that communicates an even deeper level of consideration. This image expands the categories to include cultural and environmental considerations. In addition, it also expands the personal focus to connect with family, community, and world.

Overall, the message is to consider the fullness of life, all the ways we are affected and affect others, and all the ways we can grow and change to create a world where wellness for all is the value we live by.

The garden sustains us in many ways by providing nourishment for our body and spirit. It is where we develop a relationship with the earth that sustains us – where we nurture the plants and the soil they grow in. It is a place for contemplation and appreciation for life. Without a garden we quickly become a society that hardly knows a definition of food or where it comes from.

Whether you have room for a garden or not, everyone can begin with containers in their house or on their porch. For food or just aesthetic value, by surrounding ourselves with life we can relearn appreciation for our Source and the nourishment we are provided. In the garden, we can then contemplate our needs and design our house to nurture the path we desire. Starting with the garden, nurture can be the center of our design.

The library sustains our intellect and soul. There we learn from the perspective of others and all of history. By surrounding ourselves with prose and poetry we find connection and growth. We also establish a vision for who we are and where we are going. In the library, whether bound or virtual, we can contemplate the thoughts of others as we nurture our own creativity. Starting with the library, we can build our design to express our place in history.

From this foundation we can contemplate other aspects of design consideration. Among these considerations are practical solutions to meet our personal needs and budget, to limit our impact on the environmental, to optimize our wellness, to express our creativity and personal aesthetic. Here are some design resources from my library that guide my path:

I have been a fan of the work of Marshall Rosenberg and  The Center for Nonviolent Communication (also known as Compassionate Communication) for some time. It is a simple process, used throughout the world, to practice communication with empathy rather than judgment. It is used in a variety of settings to help facilitate healthy interaction as well as to mediate conflict. Families, businesses, associations, and even volatile settings like prisons and international peace efforts have benefited from the process.

Although a simple process, it is difficult to assimilate in our blame oriented psyche. It is also often criticized as a mechanical process that can lack “heart” and authenticity. I recently started training in a process called BePeace that that has been inspired by the practice of HeartMath in combination with Compassionate Communication. The Institute of HeartMath has scientifically designed a process to help people shift the energy of stress to the energy of the heart – values and feeling like appreciation, forgiveness, care, etc. BePeace integrates the coherence cultivated in HeartMath to help facilitate deeper interpersonal connection through Compassionate Communication.

Although much more than I can communicate in this short post, the basic process starts with a HeartMath practice called Quick Coherence. It focuses personal attention on the heart,  establishes rhythmic breathing, and recreates feelings of appreciation in the midst of stress. Once coherence is established, the four steps of Compassionate Communication are followed to better connect with yourself and others.

The foundations of Compassionate Communication are in the following four steps:

1. Observation – what is the objective reality of situation without judgment or evaluation?
2. Feelings – what are the emotions present in yourself and others involved?
3. Needs – what are the underlying human needs that are unmet in yourself or others?
4. Requests – what do you want (without expectation or demand)?

Stay tuned for more on this process – I am incorporating BePeace in my work in community building and am excited to share more. Let me know if you have questions.

The Wiki summary of Permaculture includes the 12 principles from the book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, written by David Holmgren, one of the founders of Permaculture.

1. Observe and interact – By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
2. Catch and store energy – By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
3. Obtain a yield – Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback – We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
5. Use and value renewable resources and services – Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.
6. Produce no waste – By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
7. Design from patterns to details – By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
8. Integrate rather than segregate – By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
9. Use small and slow solutions – Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
10. Use and value diversity – Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
11. Use edges and value the marginal – The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively use and respond to change – We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

As you can see these Permaculture principles build on the ethics and provide a complete conceptual foundation for the design and redesign of our environment with sustainability in mind. Taken together and holistically, the ethics and principles of Permaculture can also provide the guiding considerations for restructuring our personal life choices, relationships, and economics.

It is only when we consider all aspects of life that we are adequately addressing sustainability and the spirit of Permaculture. Take a look at how Rob Hopkins, the founder of Transition Initiatives, applies these principles to business in his article on PermaculturePrinciples.com.

I am starting to offer an opportunity to learn and practice a set of community building skills in an experiential small group setting. The group process focuses on the basic organizing and decision making of Dynamic Governance (Sociocracy) and, as part of the program, it also incorporate the communication principles of NonViolent Communication and an introduction to the State of Grace Document for agreement building.

I will be focusing the training with people that are part of a group where you can practice between sessions. The training will start with a 4 hour introduction and integration of collaborative tools, and continue with six  2 hour meetings. Sessions will provide experiential training as well as an opportunity to process your practice. The training will be relevant for people new to these tools as well as those that have a basic understanding and want support for their implementation. The group will be limited in size to provide the most beneficial group process and personal attention.

I have designed the workshop to be available on a regular basis, as I have enough people for a small group. I can do it with unrelated people from a variety of organizations or with a related group from one organization that want to work together with optimum synergy and harmony. I also can do the workshop face to face or via webinar. Contact me for more information.

The workshop focuses on the following objectives:

• Establishing a foundation of personal and collaborative awareness
• Understanding and experiencing the sociocratic circle process
• Facilitating solution oriented, consent based decision making
• Empowering creative and shared leadership
• Learning a three step process for crafting effective proposals
• Navigating a variety of facilitation challenges
• Designing relationships for graceful agreement
• Practicing authentic and compassionate communication
• Applying the principles in your home or organization