There will be an Interest Meeting on Thursday, April 21, at 4:15 in Spence (AVRP) 101 for a travel/ residency version of the “Environmental Visions” (ENS 350) course to be offered in January 2012.
This course offers an up-close look at two eco-futurist visions that are taking shape today: Paolo Soleri’s hyper-dense “arcology” (architecture / ecology), a prototype of which is rising in the high desert near Phoenix, Arizona; and a maximally sustainable “permaculture” (permanent agriculture) as it is being put into practice in the seaside rainforest at the Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living & Education on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. We will live, study, and work at each site for about a week. Accompanying side trips – to Biosphere 2 near Tucson; to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale; to Tacotal Eco-Villages in San Mateo, Costa Rica – will complement and complicate the two main visions. Students’ concurrent term project will be to complete a radical eco-futurist redesign of their own for Elon University. Three preparatory evening seminars will be required during Fall term. This course has a limited enrollment and additional travel costs. Sign-up begins at the Interest Meeting!