Three Sisters Modular Village

​As part of a National Science Foundation grant application, the local non-profit Core Communities asked us to conceive with them an urban and economic playbook for net-positive indigenous living. Beginning the study with their 30 acre site in Valencia County, we combined traditional urban and Pueblo-influenced settlement patterns with current and emerging energy, data and harvesting technologies. This mixed-use prototype for medium density high desert living can be adapted to any region’s economy and biosphere by adjusting the proportions of its modules.

Analogous to the intercropping agricultural methods of the Pre-Columbian Americas, this village concept produces more than it consumes. Coordinating mixed uses with mixed production, the village offers a community-based network of resource harvesting, live/work convenience and income generation.

Exploring the realities of scale through shipping container tower variations.

Combining notions of terraforming with modularity, Pueblo Bonito with Tatooine and Arrakis, Apple Campus with Steampunk, the 30 acre site near Los Lunas, NM is a collection of urban co-functioning molecules. Within this village we arranged co-functional Centers using modular building units. Each Center clusters housing, vertical farms, and workspaces around water collecting plazas and courtyards. Pedestrian lanes are also made for low-speed, low-volume vehicular circulation to facilitate bicycle travel, micro-buses and delivery vehicles. A perimeter wind break of turbines, earth berms and drought-tolerant native habitats surrounds the site.


​Life at Three Sisters is defined by 21st century conveniences and sociability, but with the added freedom from commuting needs, energy independence and land stewardship. The site produces and stores electricity, harvests water, offers profitable data center capacity at a global scale and provides fresh produce for itself and neighboring communities.

PROJECT YEAR
2021

AREA
30 acres

LOCATION
Las Lunas, NM

CATEGORY
Conceptual Planning