In Nature's Embrace
Open. Green. Think.
Nature has this way of working with your imagination to transport you out of the city, in a magic realism sleight of hand. With some help from the trees here. Every tree – each one of the hundred or so trees here is planted by us. Each is twenty years old or less. You can tell the time in trees here and see time change and grow every time you visit. Like most people, we thought that when you plant trees, you do so for someone else to enjoy but nature has a way of surprising you and we enjoy the play of light and shade – the dancing bokehs daily and the flora, fauna; and fruits of our everyday learning and efforts.
With Design in the center of a meeting of human nature, architecture and culture, with the possibilities that the future has to offer, the Design Farm is an experiment in the future of city living that integrates wisdom from our past, is in constant conversation with the elements and lets our deepest senses be our guide. A place where you experience sunrises and sunsets, where you experience living and is a living experience of sustainable possibilities within city limits.
We, the Founders are city folk who escaped a confused city that is always groaning under the weight of constant and shocking growth. To start up a farm or a forest, frankly we don’t know which! What we do know is that today it is our refuge in a city that grew outwards and around us. While we design the life we want to live, safe from the chaos and pressures but close enough to our city’s pulse and excitement. We went off the grid and we prefer to keep it that way as far as our water and electricity are concerned. We have a sweet water lake under a granite slab that is naturally recharged by design and we set up our own transformer when we moved here. We now rely hugely on solar, even for our cars.
Over xx coconut trees, yield us just enough fruit to make coconut oil to share with family and friends. Our over yyyy other fruit trees and plants keep us expectant and grateful. We are not natural born farmers, nor do we have any commercial interest in the harvest so we live and we learn, oftentimes from our own mistakes. We have made nature our guide and in micro and macro ways, we love to live naturally and share our learnings, stories – of thieving parakeets, the warmth of our sunshine and a micro ecosystem of migratory butterflies, birds by times of day and changing seasons.