Virtually everything built by the Foundation CIC would seek to be ‘green’ in some fashion as a simple matter of responsible design. But when it comes to planned communities, it would seek to express this in a very comprehensive manner with design that seek sustainability on all three sides of its equation; materials, energy, and resource efficiency including land itself. Recyclable materials, renewable energy, alternative waste processing, and compact, connected, auto-use-precluding structures would all be the norm along with design features and community programs intended to encourage a conserver lifestyle without sacrifice or inconvenience.
Foundation Communities[]
Foundation communities would also seek to present, through their architecture, analogs to the architecture employed with Aquarius and in space. They would not seek to create stage-set mock-ups space stations and lunar bases –though communities might build these on a small scale for space advocacy and tourism purposes. Rather, they would seek to employ analogous construction techniques with a comfortable and functional contemporary design aesthetic that demonstrates the real-life potential of a high quality of life in these other environments using these building techniques. For instance, modular component buildings systems as would be used in space are perfectly capable of producing effective and elegant housing on Earth with little difference in the basic technology. Demonstrating this suggests that living in space need not be so different or ‘SciFi’ in nature. You’ve created a real-world analog to what it would be like right here on Earth that looks both novel AND ‘normal’ –whatever that really means given the typical vinyl-sided squalor of the American suburbs...
These communities would also seek to begin the cultivation of a Post-Industrial culture in anticipation of the very concerted efforts toward this pursued in the Aquarius phase. This means the advocacy and demonstrated use of current and emerging Post-Industrial tools such as those embodied by Fab Labs and a use of community architecture designed for mixed-use that encourages at-home in-community entrepreneurship and industry. Obviously, there are limits to this given today’s limited tools of personal industry. One could not have home businesses involving lots of toxic materials or potentially hazardous industrial processes. But anything that can be done cleanly in a garage-shop setting and offers the prospect of local production and commerce eliminating the need for something bought in distant stores or eliminating the need to commute somewhere else for work would be encouraged.
The example designs suggested here are intended to represent approaches to several likely environments/locations, key building techniques, and different founding group situations. They each have similar characteristics but differing aesthetics and thus may cultivate or appeal to a slightly different culture. Some of these also have direct counterparts in building approaches for Aquarius seed settlements