How can we design systems of production that – directly influence the regeneration of soil, enhance biodiversity and-preserve water in order to create more withstanding ecosystems?

How can we create a product that is repairable and adaptable not only to different scales of production, but also to shifting availability of natural resources? The research project Syntropia directly relates the production of raw materials to the production of materials and, in extension, products. It proposes a shoe made with bio-based materials which can grow on one polycultural field, in the mountain area of Andalucia in the South of Spain.

Syntropia creates a dialogue between the design and implementation of the polyculture and the design and production of the shoe. The ecosystemic necessities of the multicrop culture determine the design of the shoe and vice versa. Syntropia is a project done in collaboration with Sophia Guggenberger and is funded by Re-fream, a project supported by the European Union as part of the STARTS programme, Horizon 2020.

Syntropia has been awarded the Design Distributed Award For Responsible Design 2022, and has been a finalist of the YouFab Award 2021.

Photos by Elisabeth Handl, Illustrations by Anastasija Mass

Maya Forest Garden - The Milpa cycle

“Domesticated crops and useful weedy herbs are cultivated annually over approximately four years, while woody shrubs, fruit trees, and hardwoods sprout and grow in the shade of the tall maize, progressing toward the next stage in the cycle. Some perennial crops are established at this time as well. When the woody shrubs ans trees have grown enough to shade annuals, the field advances through successive stages of guided reforestation, transforming from an open field into a managed forest (Everton 2012:16-18; Hernàndez Xolocotzi et al. 1995:131-139; Livi Tacher and Golicher 2004) “

From The Maya Forest Garden. Eight millennia of sustainable Cultivation of the tropical woodlands. Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh - 2016 Routledge

The Maya Forest Garden is the traditional Maya orchid plot that evolves from the milpa, a traditional Mesoamerican and Maya agricultural field that employs a system of land use which cycles from closed forest canopy to a field dominated by annual crops to an orchard garden, and from an orchard garden back to the closed canopy.

The Maya Forest remains the second most biodiverse place in the world second only to the Amazon forest. The Milpa Cycle is the conservation method of farming and managing the Maya forest. It goes through four main stages over the course of approximately 20 years.

The Milpa Forest Garden system had been selected as the first case study because of the rich availability of scientific and non documentation and analysis of each growing phase. It presents a circular finite model which frames the research time-wise. It’s a successional, polycultural, agroforestal system, which allows the research to analyse a variety of diverse species, from annual to perennial, from weeds to trees. For the purpose of the exhibition and to facilitate the initial steps of the research a selection of 13 species of flora has been made, the one more recurring in the literature, even if it’s accounted that in the Milpa Forest Garden more than 90 species can be found.

It’s important to note that although this analysis focuses exclusively on the agricultural and productive aspect of the Milpa cycle, the values of this model goes way beyond this. As Ronald Nigh says “ The making of milpa is the central, most sacred act, one which binds together the family, the community, the universe…[it] forms the core institution of Indian society in Mesoamerica and its religious and social importance often appear to exceed its nutritional and economic importance”

Milpa moves beyond the economism and instrumentalization of nature and human relationships that characterizes neoliberal and late capitalism. For this reason, I am influenced by this holistic ontology without claiming it as my own, nor reifying it as a piecemeal pedagogic influence to mitigate the disasters of capitalism.

References

https://mayaforestgardeners.org/

Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands Book by Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh, Routledge 2016

Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenim Book by Julia Watson, Tachen 2019