AUTOPOIESIS LLC
  • Regenerating Life
  • Design as Life
  • Ecological Planning
  • Systems Transformation
  • Valle Sagrado Regnerativa
  • Kathryn Langstaff
  • Clients
  • Design Thinking
  • Additional Projects
  • Contact

Ecological Planning ~
Culture, multi-stakeholder engagement, bioregional building systems, biodiversity, wildlife corridors ​

Services include planning at site to bioregional scales supporting regenerative goals, biodiversity and community health. Methods include systems mapping, community engagement, social processes supporting regeneration, the development of cultural narratives, and ethnovideography.

​Pattern Language Planning and the Nature of Order

Reliable Prosperity: Bioregional Regeneration

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From 1999 to 2002, autopoiesis llc Principals Stuart Cowan and Kathryn Langstaff worked on the Conservation Economy framework for the ecological megaregion scale regeneration of the coastal temperate rainforest of North America stretching from northern California to Alaska. This took the form of an interactive, online pattern language with 57 patterns addressing social, ecological, and economic transformation across multiple scales, later renamed Reliable Prosperity. The pattern language was later rendered as an experimental "confederated wiki" by colleague Ward Cunningham, who invented wiki technology.


Sisters & Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

regenerative campus needs assessment & master plan, wildlife habitat, community garden, constructed wetland

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Sisters and Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe Michigan, 1997. We conducted a needs assessment and worked with a leadership and management team to create a master plan to steward their 500,000 s.f. campus and 360+ acreage which included a financial analysis for helping them make decisions to reallocate funds to create regenerative campus that increased biodiversity while making financial sense. An 11 acre lawn conversion to meadow and prairie improved the bio-diversity of the site and protected existing natural habitat. In 2010, The National Wildlife Federation declared the grounds as an official “Certified Wildlife Habitat” site. In the parking lots, vegetated swales handle the storm water runoff. St. In 1998, Mary Organic Farm (SMOF) was created as a two-acre community organic garden dedicated to the renewal of local, sustainable food. Constructed wetlands, imitating natural wetlands, purify water coming from the Mother House’s gray water system. By emulating nature’s drainage systems, close to one million gallons of water is diverted annually from the municipals storm sewer system.
In subsequent years they hired Susan Maxman Architects to complete a sustainable remodel of the historic 375,000 s.f. Mother House which received a 2006 AIA Committee on the Environment Award."  http://ihmsisters.org/living-justly/sustainable-community/motherhouse-campus/vision/


​Placed-based Solutions for Building with Local Materials

Pine Ride Reservation - Culturally Rooted Buildings

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From 1993 to 2011, Kathryn Langstaff and Stuart Cowan worked on Pine Ridge Reservation with the Ta S'ina Tokaheya tribal non-profit, O'yate O'Tipi Tawapi ("homes for the people" project), and the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, and taught at Sinte Gleska University.
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Ta S'ina Tokaheya Foundation Ecovillage
Kathryn served as project manager for  William McDonough Architects on a long-term ecovillage development project utilizing natural building, renewable energy, biodynamic agriculture, GIS mapping, and other community economic development opportunities. Built a prototype of an affordable hydraulic pressed block adobe house with a renewable energy system.

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 O'yate O'Tipi Tawapi ~ Homes for the People
“Emily’s Simple Dream Home” pioneered a program for designing your own home using local and natural building materials in which the community members would assist in building each other’s houses. With Lakota builders, designed, gathered volunteer support, secured grant funds and built an affordable demonstration straw bale home on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota.



Klamath Basin

 With support from a USDA Forest Service Resource Advisory Committee grant, in 2007-8 autopoiesis, llc worked with the Klamath Siskiyou Arts Center, the Karuk Tribe, and the Six Rivers National Forest on a regional approach to reduce standing trees in the  forest through harvesting 14" DBH roundwood to restore the forest to Karuk basket weaver standards. Kathryn Langstaff created a bioregional building system using "leichtlehmbau" that is fire resistant, which proved to be a visionary building system for fire protection in California. In 2009, autopoiesis, llc worked with the Klamath Tribe on the application of New Markets Tax Credits to large-scale forest restoration.
  • Regenerating Life
  • Design as Life
  • Ecological Planning
  • Systems Transformation
  • Valle Sagrado Regnerativa
  • Kathryn Langstaff
  • Clients
  • Design Thinking
  • Additional Projects
  • Contact