Ecology Factor E in five minutes

Introducing the Global Village Construction Set Our aim is the full integration landscape shot of small-scale, adaptable man- ufacturing with sustainable ag- riculture to produce the Global Village Construction Set. With the Global Village Construction Set in hand, people will be able to survive and thrive with a high quality of life that is not depen- dent on global supply chains, human exploitation, and envi- Factor E Farm is in Maysville, MO, North of Kansas City ronmental degradation. fabrication lab, where we will be themselves. The oldest and most “The best design experienc- able to cast and machine metal, basic tool in a machine shop is es occur when no one can Print 3D plastic objects, etch cir- a lathe, which can be used to claim credit for the solution- cuits, and construct high-quality make all the other tools (as well when the solution grows and equipment whose performance as itself). The lathe dates back evolves organically out a is competitive with commercial to ancient Egypt, and a journey- particular situation, process, products, at dramatic cost sav- man machinist’s education has and pattern of communica- ings. The fabrication lab will traditionally included the con- tion.” not just be a world-class micro- struction of his own machines —Sim Van der Ryn factory churning out almost in the shop of a master crafts- With your help and the col- anything imaginable, it will also man. Only since the late 20th laboration of open source de- be completely self-replicating. century has this not been the velopers around the world, we Fully trained fabricators will be case. If you are lucky enough to will refine existing technologies able to use the tools of the fab- know an elderly machinist, ask and techniques into simple, rication lab to re-build the en- after his education. Although easily replicated, open source tire lab at the cost of materials. the fabrication lab will intro- designs with closed, zero-waste Think of this as a mini China on duce new materials, tools, and resource cycles. Our aim is your desktop. techniques, it will be a return to to have the whole Construc- Designing a shop from the tradition, not a radical depar- tion Set ready in two years as ground up to be self replicat- ture. a completely opens source, self ing is not a radical concept. Self The Global Village Construction replicating package, so you can replicating tools may sound fan- Set is not about generating new build it yourself. tastic, but it is only in this cur- technologies, it is about refining rent stage of industrial capital- existing ones, and the fabrica- Fabrication ism that the tools in a shop are tion lab is based around exist- The key to the GVCS is the not regularly used to replicate ing projects, such as the Lifetrac machine. With this we scence. can build from scratch, at the The same design strategy has cost of materials, the whole lab, been applied to a CEB Press, and any other technology in the which pumps out high quality GVCS. compressed earth bricks, and All of these technologies ex- is being applied to a sawmill. ist, but middlemen, R&D costs, Together, these three machines company overhead, proprietary allow the construction of com- technique, and limited demand fortable, well insulated build- CEB press drive the cost of equipment way ings using entirely local materi- beyond the only necessary costs- als. And we are well on our way materials and labor. Through to developing a Solar steam ar- online collaboration with a ray, a small steam engine, and global pool of talent we can a biomass burner for easy, flex create easy to follow plans that fuel power generation. eliminate all the extra costs. Our design technique works like “It is when two differing ar- this: we look at what we need to eas of knowledge are force- Babbington burner do, and the tasks that need to fully brought in contatct with be performed to do it. Then we one another that... a new sci- crib the essential functions off ence may come into being.” existing machines and combine —Victor Papanek them when possible into sim- Our quick pace of development pler, more easily maintained is sustained by the strength of devices. Instead of design for online collaboration and open obsolescence, we design for dis- plans. We believe that open assembly and repair. source development is dramati- Sawmill? Right now we the LifeTrac, a cally superior to traditional combination and skid methods, and not just in soft- loader that achieves a 10x re- ware. Open Source is already duction in price over commer- proving itself in commercial cial equipment because it is de- computer hardware world signed for lifetime use, not one with products like the Arduino time sale, and for easy main- (MORE) Instead of working in tenance, not planned obsoles- obscurity, our plans receive the Multimachine, a combination Illustration of wasteful industrial economy (John Lyle) CNC (computer numerical con- trol) lathe, drill press, and mill- ing machine. For plastic we will have a RepRap, a reproducing rapid prototyping machine that can fabricate plastic parts from CAD drawings. We will add to this a plasma cutting table for large metal, a 300lb per hour Illustration of post-industrial economy (John Lyle) metal casting foundry heated by our Babington burner, and a heavy lathe for turning large metal objects. To make thin film plastics for greenhouses, we will create an open source plastic extrusion and glazing photo from first solar meetup some other big group project (gotta show feet on the ground)

feedback of experts and inter- cess will not be measured in our rennial crops, tree crops, and ested amateurs as they happen. abundance of intangibles such raised bed gardening. While As a result we make fewer mis- as happiness and self-worth. documenting our progress, takes, and recover quickly from We are making real products we will also be building a gene the ones we do make. that will compete in the market- bank of regionally appropriate But is more than just place, and we will capture mar- plants, animals, and fungi. We a process for us, we believe ket share because our products are busy planting a permacul- in openness as an ideology of are a good value. Our project is ture forest garden, where the transformation. Imagine the not just a dream, it is a practi- trees and bushes produce nuts, knowledge necessary for sus- cal plan for an alternative eco- berries, tubers, and other ed- taining advanced civilization nomic model that can and will ibles, as well as forage for our available to everyone, not just compete. animals, all in a self-sustaining a limited technical elite. We forest ecology. see open source as a solution “Not seeing the real face This summer we will conduct to environmental degradation of industrial technology is a combined /aqua- and warfare- an Open Source among the factors that make culture experiment using fish, Ecology integrating computers, it possible to ignore its pres- chickens, and raised vegetable communications, energy pro- ence until its effects become beds in a system designed af- duction, fabrication, and food overwhelming.” ter the Mexico Basin Chinampa production will lead to greater —John Tillman Lyle system. Originally created to self sufficiency and improved To demonstrate and develop feed the 250,000 residents of quality of life in resilient com- this new system, we are scaling Tenochtitlán (modern day Mex- munities. As our designs come up. On site we expect to have ico City) Chinampa is one of the together, we are tooling up for 20-30 people by the end of the oldest integrative agriculture community supported manu- year, fed by our farm. techniques in the world. Fertile facturing, where people collabo- agricultural runoff (in our case rate to fund our facility, and we Agriculture from chickens) is directed into repay them by selling at the cost While our methods will be ponds, triggering algae blooms of materials and labor, linking open, our resource cycles will that feed fish, whose waste in our users to us and breaking the be closed. Organic matter and turn feeds feeds lettuce and oth- standard “consumer” and “pro- nutrients will be in complete er vegetables grown in beds sur- ducer” dichotomy. cycles, enriching our soil rath- rounded by water. Waste from This vision inspires us, but you er than mining it. This means the vegetable garden is then fed don’t need to take our word for integrating wild animals, tra- to worms, who are then fed to it. In the near term, our suc- ditional animal husbandry, pe- chickens. In this way we can intensively cultivate a protein- photo of current residents rich diet in a small space, en- riching the soil while producing food for sale. When whole systems are put together, their efficiency is as- tounding. What was once waste is suddenly a resource. Too of- ten in our current economy, we make decisions in isolation of any greater system. The Glob- al Village Construction Set is a fundamental break from at- omized thinking. We need not make sacrifices in quality of life to move beyond our destructive industrial system, all we need is full integration, closing resource loops and ending waste. We photos of online collaborators can make local economies work, but it will take global coopera- tion. Please join us- review our plans, make comments, become a True Fan, pick some vegeta- bles, or help us build. With all our hands and all our brains, we can re-make the world.

“By attempting merely to im- prove and modify the familiar ways of designing and build- ing you will succeed only in perpetuating original errors and limitations. So do not be afraid of radical methods.” —R. Buckminster Fuller

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