The Story

With the growing global population, urban milieus are facing more challenges. According to the projection from the UN, about 66% of the total population will be living in urban areas. This would demand a sufficient supply for urban inhabits which requires energy and other resources to transport the resource. The centralized living systems are vulnerable to big crises or disasters. Once the centralized output systems are down, a large part of the system would crash. 

Walking through the history of innovation, it is just a matter of how to apply these sciences to the architecture of everyday life to create energy positive communities. In 2015, ReGen Villages was founded. Through collaboration among tech giants and research institutes, ReGen Village is able to financially and scientifically pool water, food, and energy reproductive systems together to create closed-loop materialism communities. The concept was unrevealed at the Venice Biennale.1 The company performs as a real estate development company, and its first project is expected to be completed in Almere, the Netherlands in 2018 with 25 pilot homes. 

The project pulls together innovators, architects and engineers to perform top-down planning to make the off-grid living and localized urban metabolism systems possible for future urban settlers. Thus, unlike traditional communities which depends on central grids’ import, the communities will feature cradle to cradle material consumption, water-recycle system, high-yield organic food production, and smart energy grid, and energy positive homes. Each community is envisioned to be tailored fit for each region through collaboration with local communities and universities, which empowerment of local voices.2 The goal is to make all community infrastructure work together as closed loops by design and make resources accessible for everyone who lives in the community. 

Each completed ReGen Village project will house 100 families on about 50 acres of land, and between 300 to 400 residents are expected to live in the community. Besides providing close to natural feeling for homeowners, and home reproductive system also gives settlers a new image of urban living with their own food in the home. The ecological autonomous community will also be able to form its own local social culture, as financial incentives are provided to lower monthly management fee and encourage residents to participate the community services.3 The ability to use work contribution to offset the cost in the community volunteer system could encourage the social banding in these newly formed communities. 

After completion, settlers would be able to produce their own food at house and community scale. Additionally, feeding information back to the larger urban grid or ReGen Villages, if any excess amount produced in the system. Besides social and environmental innovation through top-down planning in ReGen Villages, which could create ecological autonomous systems that have a lower reliance on the large grid and more resilience when a big crisis happens, such as natural disasters, financial crisis. Furthermore, the localized materialism would improve the use value of local resources, because of easier management and waste less on transportation regarding material life cycle.