If you are reading this, I want you to feel some love from me. We’ve been a long journey together, and it’s only the beginning. The fact that you’re here means 🌍 to me.
I’m writing from Austin, where we’ve spent the last few weeks touring land — walking on paths and terrains under the hot Texas sun, trying to find the home where the Agartha Campus could land.
Follow the sunlight. 🌞
We’ve been progressing our research and planning for a Solarpunk HQ, and now, it’s evolving into a Solarpunk Campus.
The Solarpunk Campus we’re imagining doesn’t exist yet — but every quality of it does exist, scattered across many different places that each nail one or few of the things, but not all of them.
Some have the technology and miss the soul; some are built for healing but not innovation; some are healing the people but not the planet, or vice versa; some incubate careers but skip spiritual grounding; some are visionary communes with no financial engine to last…
For a long time I couldn’t explain what we were making without listing five different things in one go, and watching people’s confusion. I recently realized that what we’re building is like the modern Silk Road for ‘Solarpunks’ to meet:
The Silk Road was never one shop. It was the road that connected all of them — tea from China, spices from India, trinkets from the bazaars of the Middle East, gadgets and glass from Europe — a long, living route where the best of everywhere met and changed hands. The diversity of cultures became a supernova for a new world, a new level of cross-cultural understanding and creativity.
Everything we want for the Campus already exists out there, scattered in bits and bobs: there are plenty of meditation centers, yoga studios, wellness bath houses, co-working offices, third space cafes, permaculture gardens, fab labs, and creative studios, each one doing its thing beautifully and on its own. I’ve come to see all of these as the shops inside the Silk Road. What we’re building is the space that contains all of them them — the place where a Solarpunk can find all of it in one walkable village, and where the pieces seamlessly integrate and start becoming a single way of life.
The Agartha Map has been designed for that, and there are some incredible communities on there, but I haven’t found one with all the boxes checked, so… what if we build it?
The Agartha Campus is the deliberate fusion of all of them at once — a new kind of college, a creative studio, a regenerative land project, and an intentional community — for Solarpunk builders to live the world they dream while building it, and for the template to be clear enough so that others copy it.
After listing out all the qualities of what we want to build, I am realizing that we are envisioning a ‘new type of university campus’, immersed in nature, designed to incubate the best of human potential.
Our north star is to create a more connected, healed, sustainable world, integrated with ethical technologies, human centric designs, and a symbiotic ecosystem — a more Solarpunk world.
There are many precedents of ‘new type of university’:
Extitutions — a concept from Primavera De Filippi.
What we love: a unique filter for self-selecting group of people with considerate and dynamic container for co-creation
Black Mountain College — the great experimental arts college of the last century, where learning happened by making and the line between studying and living barely existed.
What we love: an experimental college for wild ideas that fit no institutional box.
Mars College — the off-grid desert community where builders, artists, and hackers live low cost, with lots of grit, and prototype anything.
What we love: the hacker-lab spirit and the proof that a good life isn’t tied to luxury.
Minerva — a university that tore up the old campus and rebuilt higher education from first principles.
What we love: the idea of turning the world to your campus
Founder Houses (HF0, the Residency, Betaworks) — incubators for deep focus where people build companies shoulder to shoulder.
What we love: the incubation engine, the magic of peer support, and environment for optimized focus.
Plum Village — the mindfulness community where being humans is the curriculum.
What we love: embodied practices in world care, compassion, deep listening, and mindful living.
Feytopia — a roving creative community built around play, art, and belonging.
What we love: harmonious containers for co-creation and authentic creativity.
Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities — the century-old blueprint for small, self-governing towns that balance the town and the country, where you actually know your neighbor.
What we love: the structural DNA of a humane & Utopian large scale city
What we love: A multi generational ‘campus’ that makes ongoing education accessible for the whole neighborhood, shared event calendar & lectures.
When I lay all the scattered pieces side by side, certain qualities start to resonate more — the boxes a real Solarpunk Campus would need to check, not one at a time, but all at once:
A school for humans — a place to learn how to be a better human before you learn anything else: emotional awareness, mindfulness and compassion, health and wellness, communication skills, personal development… Our creation is a reflection of our inner world, so nourishing that inner world sets up a foundation for everything else to thrive. (See our article on The School for Human Arts)
A creative + innovation studio — fab labs, prototyping, workshops, and the tools and collaborators to actually launch the companies, practices, art, and stories you came to make. The idea is that friction for creativity should be low, so that an idea has better chance to be incubated. Examples: Mars College, Noisebridge
A regenerative land project — permaculture, agroforestry, a food forest growing most of what gets eaten on site, existing structures retrofitted instead of bulldozed, the land left healthier than we found it. In this way, we get to walk the talk as we live what we preach. Examples: Solar Punk Farms
An intentional community — the warmth of a loving family and the shared rituals of a commune, not an exit-based anti-capitalist commune, but well-integrated into ‘default’ society. Examples: Lama Foundation, Twin Oaks
A financial engine underneath all of it — because the most beautiful, visionary community in the world still needs a way to sustain itself, and this is the box the dreamiest projects almost always skip. Examples: a self-sustaining retreat model like the Esalen Institute
So here’s the Campus in one sentence
The Agartha Campus is a physical home for the Solarpunks — a community of builders to live, create, heal, grow, and be empowered to create their best work. It’s not a wellness retreat, an incubator, a farm, an office, a co-living house, or a school. It’s all of them at once.
The ‘curriculum’ at the campus will be self-chosen, we want to pose the question: ‘if you had one month to create whatever you want, what would you do?’
Our focus is to set up the right physical infrastructure and social fabric, the ‘silk road’ as a container for the Solarpunk builders to create their own curriculums, help them commit to the track, and thrive.
We want to rally ambitious individuals with a zest for life, and eager to fuel their passion to create something meaningful, something bigger than themselves, and provide the space so they get to live well, grow to be more grounded, connected, healthy, and aware, so that they get to build their dreams while living their best lives — the two usually fuel each other
As people get to live in the better world they dream while they’re building it, all in one place, this model itself could become a template, with clearly stated principles, practices, intentions, designs, executed well that others can copy it too.
We want to build the first one, and do it well, eventually the world can be filled with Solarpunk campuses, made accessible, humane, and just… good!
We actually really DO want to find people who are interested in joining. We are looking for people who are interested in helping with:
Funding the Campus
Building the Campus
Joining the Campus
Spreading the word!
If you resonate with our vision, and have the capacity to do any of the above, that would mean the world to us!!
🌞 FOLLOW THE SUNLIGHT!
If this vision resonates with you, follow along our substack to stay tuned on our next steps! Send us a DM if you’d like to collaborate :)
✨ Thanks for reading! Agartha is a creative studio on a mission to create a Solarpunk cultural movement. 💕 Join us as we chronicle our journey exploring Solarpunk lifestyles around ethical technology, planetary regeneration, loving community, and spiritual growth. ☀️
If this work feels meaningful to you, please become our paid patron and support this labor of love! We really appreciate it :)
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.