A School for Next-Era Sustainable Infrastructure
A project in Southwestern New Mexico focusing on affordable housing using local materials, food sovereignty, social resilience and training the next generation of tradespeople.
It’s more than just a single neighborhood designed for its microbiome— it’s a sustainable microvillage template that is designed to go viral.
A “Biome Village” with ten architect-designed adobe homes and shared infrastructure– an industrial kitchen, state-park-style bathroom building and community gardens on a community land trust. Super affordable, disability-forward, beautiful housing that works for sensitive people and lower-income people alike.
Homes.——- Food.——- Jobs.
We build and train people to build Adobe structures according to the New Mexico Earthen Building Code as safe, affordable, elegant, clean, fire-proof homes with clean energy and smart water management. Learn More.
We focus on food sovereignty using biodynamic farming and regenerative agriculture practices in our high desert setting, growing enough food to share and teaching others how to do the same. Learn More.
We create clean work spaces and opportunities for collaborative entrepreneurship. A business incubator focused on sustainable businesses who are growing and reinventing our common future. Learn More.
1. CEB Manufacturing
Establish a local Compressed Earth Block (CEB) manufacturing operation to create our own bricks from clean, local soil.
2. Build Our Education Campus
Build the prototype village on ten acres; Ten awesome homes, plus shared kitchen, bathroom, shop and garden.
3. More Affordable Housing
Each year, our graduates work on developing homes and infrastructure on a nearby 100 acre CLT– Community Land Trust.
Greater Context
Community Land Trusts around the World
Next Steps
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
- Give Grandly 2023Hi All!We are participating in our local Community Foundation’s annual fundraiser called Give Grandly. We’re excited! We’ll have a table at the live event at the Maker’s Market off Bullard Street in Downtown Silver City. Stop by if you’re local!Continue reading “Give Grandly 2023”
- Projects for 2023Hi Crooked Foresters! There’s so much happening, that I need to slow down long enough to write it down. Here’s an update that comes with an open invitation to Get Involved with any of these projects that might interest you.Continue reading “Projects for 2023”
- Interview with Joseph Kennedy, Natural Building Architecthttps://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-xdjup-131efb3 Joe is an author, educator, architect and artist and our newest Board member! He has thirty years of architectural experience with a focus on ecological design, green building and sustainable community design. Join us as we discuss our NeighborhoodContinue reading “Interview with Joseph Kennedy, Natural Building Architect”
Vision
Our vision is a world in which health of the human family thrives because the health of the ecology in which it is located, and from which it is inseparable, is clean, resilient, diverse and prioritized.
Mission
We design, build and propagate resiliency neighborhoods for low-income and sensitive people in a way that leads to home ownership, food sovereignty, vibrant health and liberation from environmental and economic injustice.
Our Core Values
- Justice— We take responsibility for creating and embodying systems that liberate us from injustices environmentally, socially and economically.
________________________ - Innovation— We value imagination that finds different and better housing solutions for marginalized communities, including for sensitive people.
________________________ - Inclusion— We recognize the richness that comes from collaboration among diverse partners. We celebrate partners who center the inherent dignity and equality of each person within the human family.
________________________ - Bio-diversity— We see the health of the human family as a reflection of the ecology in which is belongs and nourish regenerative systems to improve the health of the whole.
________________________ - Service— We affirm that individual and collective productivity requires the stability that comes from clean, safe housing for marginalized people, including sensitive people. Paying-it-forward then leads to communities that flourish on their own terms.
Looking for Board Members
Do you have talents and skills to contribute? Let’s collaborate!
Membership for $5/month
Do you want to be involved?
Be the first to hear updates.
Investors and Advisors
Get in touch! We love vicarious learning
to avoid predictable pitfalls.
Why Crooked Forest?
Every once in a while, you will come across a single tree in the forest that got broken and grew anyway towards the sunlight.
In Poland, there is a whole forest of these individual crooked trees that recovered. There are 400 trees that experienced a cataclysm and then grew back…together. That’s us.
We are:
- Resilient
- Resourceful
- Alive
- Growing, and
- Working Together.
What do you mean by “Sensitive People?”
Sensitive people are people who have no choice but to create a specialized environment in which they can thrive. Sensitivities are physical and biological responses to a changing environment, with social and emotional sequelae. When modern life normalizes environmental elements that injure, Sensitive people need to create micro-environments that allow them to recover from simply being in that world.
Types of Sensitivity
Environmental Sensitivity– While the prevalence of 80,000+ new chemicals in our environment since 1945 is “normal” There is a significant proportion (up to 25%) of the population who have to avoid them as much as possible to stay healthy and productive. This vulnerability is genetic, so modifying environment is mandatory. There is an acute, humanitarian need to provide housing for a segment of this growing population, as they are physically unable to stay healthy in conventionally built housing. Many can end up living in their cars and becoming environmental refugees.
Sensory Overwhelm– For the neurodivergent population, there is often also a neurological imperative to limit sounds, smells, lighting and certain tactile materials in order to protect equilibrium.
Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)– In addition to controlling exposure to physical, environmental stressors, HSPs need to also modulate sensory and emotional input and need to avoid exposure to stress and violence in media in order to regulate equilibrium, but can enjoy extreme subtleties in music, food, art and nature.
The Neurodivergent population and HSPs are disproportionately represented in the population of environmentally ill people. Learn More.
Crooked Forest Institute 