Learning

Every community is entirely unique. Each is distinctive. This work is about exploring, understanding and evolving that distinctiveness, so that members of each community can deepen their understanding of the unique essence of their particular place . . . and to see that essence as the core instrument for developing any community’s quality of life.

Spillian Workshop #2: Goal-Setting and Initial Concept 30 April – 02 May 2018 Spillian is a 33 acre historic estate, built by the Fleischmanns Yeast Family in the 1880’s as part of a summer retreat. Crowned by a museum-quality stick style mansion, embraced by the Catskills Forest, it now is the home of a center created to help people imagine past what they think is possible.

Every place on Earth is unique. Every cubic meter on Earth shares no more than 30% of the same biology with any other cubic meter on Earth. To most of us, it all looks pretty much the same one to the next. In our rush to get where we are going, we don't take the time to notice the subtle differences.

How has your thinking about what constitutes a green building changed over time? Is a green building a collection of components with green attributes? Is simply doing less harm good enough? Are we slowing down our impacts fast enough? Can doing good offset the damage we have caused? Can humanity shift from degrading living systems to helping all beings thrive?

Large expanses of windows do not mean that a space is well daylit. In fact, daylighting in such spaces is often poor resulting in huge lighting contrasts and general discomfort. Properly daylighting your renovation project uses the same method, rules and tools used when designing a new building with a few added items to consider.

Have you ever received a review comment from GBCI and wished you could just talk to the reviewer! Well now you can! A panel of GBCI LEED Project Reviewers will discuss common errors and provide helpful tips for documentation and calculations during a session at this year's GreenCon.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ― Mahatma Gandhi Learning is far more than an accumulation of knowledge and information. The most effective learning is that which is not treated as something separate from our lives, it is basically what we learn along the way if we remain open to doing so.

Join Us in Seeing with Nature’s Mind and Developing Regenerative Thinking at Spillian Building upon the success of prior workshops together, 7group and Spillian are further developing their partnership this spring by offering two workshops in the Catskills aimed at developing our capacity to practice regeneration.

At a moment when so many ecological limits are being breached by a civilization largely oblivious to its own embedment within the biosphere, how can we swiftly catalyze a collective recognition of our thorough dependence upon the animate earth? How to open a fresh and unshakeable solidarity between humankind and the other animals, plants and elemental forces that compose this breathing commonwealth?