Designing the Village
The word design has come to be associated with architecture, interiors and other consumer product design. The truth is that a village is a robust and diverse series of complex and highly interrelated physical and intangible systems, many of which must be designed before they can be enacted. In designing a village, we are trying to consider the complete built environment of Kalu Yala, including not only architecture and urbanism, but also methods of construction, energy and water systems, road infrastructure, land planning and more.
by Courtney Frazee
Posted In: Designing the Village, Our Global Community, The Creation of a Culture, Wandering Thoughts
First for some theory, then for some fun. In my last blog post, I raised the suggestion that as a community, it would be more valuable for us to be confused, and somewhat uncomfortable, by the connections between our data than interpret them according to a predetermined set of expected relationships. As scientists of the [...] Read More
by Amanda Rosenberg
Posted In: Adventures in the Tropics, Designing the Village, The Creation of a Culture, Wandering Thoughts
“House construction is a collective enterprise, one in which some men have special knowledge but all play their roles, just as the house itself is a collection of named and symbolically significant pieces that when lashed together create an aesthetically pleasing whole standing for the solidarity of kin and community” Read More
One of my favorite Radiolab episodes – “Cities” – explores how certain cities get their individual personalities. The hosts begin with a basic conceit: there’s no scientific metric for measuring a city’s personality. So much of the human-scale details that determine an individual experience within an urban center are left to chance. But two physicists [...] Read More
Lillian, Hannah and Courtney already talked about the river clean up day in their blogs, so I’m just going to post this video I created! Enjoy WATCH THE VIDEO HERE Read More
So this most recent valley trip yielded some great progress on our base camp. The base camp is just about finished with. It looking like a legit structure already. We have completed all the bamboo and palm walling as well making a great palm roof. We are basically experimenting, but i would like to incorporate [...] Read More
Kari explains the core ethics and values of permaculture and looks at how that fits into Kalu Yala's sustainable design ideas. Read More
“The lilies of the field toil not, neither do they calculate, but they are probably excellent structures, and indeed Nature is generally a better engineer than man … Nature seems to be a pragmatic rather than a mathematical designer; and, after all, bad designs can always be eaten by good ones.” – from Structures: Or [...] Read More
It all started with a girl’s enthusiasm towards birds. Terra Hope Filmer. She is a biology intern. I get to spend a lot of time with her because I share a room in the city with her as well as the tent in our base camp. Her passion towards nature and all sorts of creatures [...] Read More
by joe mckittrick
Posted In: Adventures in the Tropics, Designing the Village, Farm to Table Living, Our Global Community, The Creation of a Culture, Voices of Kalu Yala, Wandering Thoughts
let us build the future not fortify the present let our mark be a good one and not a quagmire for our children to clean let us leave the trees and the rivers to grow and flow untrammeled by human hands let future generations drift and dream to the sounds of wind rustled leaves and [...] Read More
by Zac Long
Posted In: Adventures in the Tropics, Designing the Village, The Creation of a Culture, Voices of Kalu Yala
Zac Long Week 1&2: 80 hours 1/29/12 Kalu Yala is a sustainable work in progress. The goal for our company is to create a sustainable community in the valley of Panama. This community will be a place to live as well as a place to travel to or stay for a night while passing through. [...] Read More
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