A new language for home is emerging. Philosopher Glenn Albrecht defines the sense of loss we feel as the land around us shifts and morphs as Solastalgia. He defines Soliphilia as “the love of and responsibility for a place, bioregion, planet and the unity of interrelated interests within it.” Anthropologist Paul Manson broadens Soliphilia to include positivity, interconnectedness and personal empowerment. 

On the evening before the Tiny House Fest we would like to invite you to a unique and playful communal meal. We will feast, drink and collectively talk on the important topic of creating sustainable homes and equitable space in the age of climate-led land transformations. 

Join us as we co-make dinner, explore good design for all, and share how we have each discovered a larger life by letting go! 

This fall, we ask you to stop and observe the humble milkweed plant. A native species often seen along roadsides and hedgerows - it may be a weed - but it holds abundant soft threads of interior light. It sustains what is poetic and necessary in the Berkshires as a food source for both agricultural pollinators and monarch butterflies before their long migration. Milkweed in turn produces its own wings: in November, its seedpods burst with hundreds of silky parachutes that deploy with the late fall breezes. This ubiquitous pod has many purposes, and exemplifies brilliant craft.

FESTIVE is a celebration of what is simple and good and a recognition that beauty with utility are the foundations of a content and limitless life. The Laurentian team involvement seeks to redefine consumption - "to make complete" - beyond the exchange of material goods, to include experiences, new friendships and lasting community.

Partnering with Greylock WORKS, the Laurentia Project is designing much of the event materials, including a community supper on the eve of FESTIVE and programming the vendor engagement workshop schedule. Set in an expansive, light-filled mill, the festival marketplace offers music performances, food crafters, local farmers, and the region’s best artisans and textile curators. Visit greylockworks.com/FESTIVE for more info, or join us at 508 State Rd, North Adams, MA 01247 on Nov. 18!

FESTIVE is a celebration of what is simple and good. 

A recognition that beauty with utility are the foundations of a limitless and content life.

On the Friday evening before FESTIVE, we will be co-making a consommé, a clear soup made from richly flavored stock.

Its etymology is related both to “consummate” and to “consume” and translates simply as, “to make complete.” 

This dinner seeks to explore the idea of taking past marketplaces of consumerism and translating them into marketplaces for community.

We will be cooking with author and chef Rachael Mamane (Mastering Stocks and Broths, published by Chelsea Green). 

Rachael brings a rich personal history to the cooking experience, influenced by a lost heritage and guided by a science degree.

We invite you to join us at 6 p.m. in making consommé and sharing a lively meal. 

Our only ask is that you bring a dish for sharing; please make a dish that embodies community to you.

Imagine a model of neighborhood revitalization that doesn’t displace, but instead seeks to understand a place before reinventing it. Developing new skill-sets as designers and collaborating with those who have anthropological lenses may be key to finally forming a new model to replace gentrification. This dinner will explore:

• How can oral histories and a rich variety of ethnographic skill-sets become part of the standard architectural toolset?
• What are the elements of equitable access, foundational sustainability, and shared respect that we can incorporate into the design process?
• How can we spark authentic economic innovation that is inclusive of what has come before, and also welcoming of the new?

Your ticket includes:

•  A full dinner and drinks at a private home near the Living Future conference
•  Facilitated conversation with a dozen deep thinkers
•  4 AIA and GBCI CEUs

This is evening three of our three-part "Muina Series." Muina, a Basque word for which there is no English equivalent, is how chef Josean Alija describes his approach to cooking:

It enables the creative process to be viewed as a journey to the source of things, to their roots, allowing their true potential to be developed fully through the description of rounded, complete, and pleasurable sensations.

Join us for this intimate "slow thinking dinner." Purchase tickets here.

The address of our private home for this event and other light directions will be sent to your email address a week before the event.

Feminism has complex and personal definitions. Allowing space for all versions as critical and welcome, we will listen together to our stories of misogyny in daily practice, toward a mission of transforming misogyny individually and collectively. This dinner will explore these questions:

• What are the radical ways the building industry must change to allow for the full agency of women?
• What are the cultural forces and outdated social “values” that continue to allow conditions of misogyny—at least within our industry?
• How can we foster a culture defined by empowerment and agency?

Your ticket includes:

• A full dinner and drinks at a private home near the Living Future conference
• Facilitated conversation with a dozen deep thinkers
• 4 AIA and GBCI CEUs

This is evening two of our three-part "Muina Series." Muina, a Basque word for which there is no English equivalent, is how chef Josean Alija describes his approach to cooking:

It enables the creative process to be viewed as a journey to the source of things, to their roots, allowing their true potential to be developed fully through the description of rounded, complete, and pleasurable sensations.

Join us for this intimate "slow thinking dinner." Purchase tickets here.

The address of our private home for this event and other light directions will be sent to your email address a week before the event.

In a post-truth era rife with potential for the dismantling of democratic institutions, we seek to respond with hope, rigor and productive cultural continuities. While we confront the "dismantle in order to build" loop in our body politic and in our construction industry, the Q'eswachaka bridge in Peru has been rewoven, as it has been each year, for 500 years. The bridge spans a 60-foot-deep canyon and is the last remaining stitch of a vast network of Incan roads which connected diverse communities. This dinner will explore:

• What dismantling frameworks could support more iterative, intimate process, held within the rituals and practices of culture?
• How could design process support communities in timeless and sustainable re-constructions?
• What economic benefit could we render if design had as much to do with transmitting inclusive, empowering values as it does with embodying an architect’s vision?

Your ticket includes:

• A full dinner and drinks at a private home near the Living Future conference
• Facilitated conversation with a dozen deep thinkers
• 4 AIA and GBCI CEUs

This is evening one of our three-part "Muina Series." Muina, a Basque word for which there is no English equivalent, is how chef Josean Alija describes his approach to cooking:

It enables the creative process to be viewed as a journey to the source of things, to their roots, allowing their true potential to be developed fully through the description of rounded, complete, and pleasurable sensations.

Join us for this intimate "slow thinking dinner." Purchase tickets here.

The address of our private home for this event and other light directions will be sent to your email address a week before the event.

We are living at the incredible transition of one geologic epoch to another. A delineation not in layers of rock, but marked by the impact of a single species on the Earth. The Anthropocene Epoch represents just 0.01% of the whole of Earth’s lifetime, and yet humanity's capacity to effect change is massive and potentially beautiful. 

Surrounded by the art of Justin Brice Guariglia and the food of chef Shelley Boris, this facilitated dinner will seek out the "flashover" point:

“the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you’ve built up through decades of friction with the world." (1)

Let us bring you there, and discover what we might be able to change when embedded friction gives way to trust.

Your ticket includes:

• A four-course dinner and drinks
• Set within the gallery at 231 10th Avenue, Chelsea, NYC
• Lightly facilitated conversation

The atmosphere will be set by the stunning work of Justin Brice Guariglia, which combines his own large-scale, highly detailed aerial landscape photographs with unique processes that incorporate painting, printmaking, and sculptural elements to create works embodying on a conceptual, physical and material level the complexity of the Anthropocene, the age in which humankind has left its indelible mark on the face of the entire planet.

The nourishment will be provided by Shelley Boris of Fresh Company in Garrison, New York and featuring the food of Ruby Duke of Raven and Boar Farm. Shelley writes, "Cooking is one long creative and scientific experiment. And cooks have always been on the lookout for new tastes and technologies: fire, fermenting, salting, thermometers, pressure cookers, microwaves, freeze drying, dehydrating, sous vide. The same is true in agriculture and food processing, packaging and transportation. Some of our experiments are successes and some are failures, but there will always be curiosity to explore."

The evening is hosted by Chris Garvin of Terrapin Bright Green and Victoria Anstead of TwoThirtyOneProjects in collaboration with Jennifer Preston, James Wilson and Tristan Roberts of The Laurentia Project, who will also lightly facilitate (read about our approach here) conversation toward flash-over.

This event is sold out....Please join our mailing list for future workshops!