Archives: Projects
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New Alchemy Archives
Restore the Land, Protect the Seas and Inform the Earth’s Stewards. -New Alchemy Institute motto From 1971 to 1991, The New Alchemy Institute conducted research and education on behalf of the planet, mostly related to Bioshelters, Aquaculture, and Agriculture. A 1989 publication called Promise Rediscovered : New Alchemy’s First Twenty Years gives a nice overview […]
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Bioshelters
A bioshelter is a new, more complex form of greenhouse that can meet important basic human needs. Bioshelters imagine a new synthesis between people and their local ecology: an early exploration in weaving together the sun, wind, biology and architecture on behalf of humanity.
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Aquaculture
Aquaculture is where people, food, water, and ecology meet. New Alchemy explored aquaculture as a way to produce food from small-scale, local water sources: fish in cages in wild ponds, in ponds dug in the ground, in solar ponds above the ground, and in-ground ponds in greenhouses.
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Agriculture
Agriculture A major goal of New Alchemy’s research was to explore ways to produce food— local, healthy, and sufficient food— using sustainable methods that do not rely on fossil fuel and avoid chemical toxins. Inspiration and information was taken from observation of nature, learning how pre-industrial societies sustained themselves, and applying new scientific knowledge. The […]
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Compost Greenhouse
Compost Greenhouse Newly-built compost piles heat up in the center for several weeks, steaming hot sometimes. A sequence of multiple compost piles in bins created continuous, steady heat, which enabled many kinds of crops to grow over many winters. This bioshelter concept works best where a constant supply of compost materials are available nearby. For […]
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Pillow Dome
Pillow Dome A dome greenhouse has the advantage of minimal shading caused by the strong, efficient dome structure. Maximizing sunlight into a greenhouse is often more important than minimizing the loss of heat out of the greenhouse. The Pillow Dome, pictured here in 1982, admitted maximum light and was also well insulated with three-layer inflated […]
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Bioshelter Arks
Bioshelter Arks Cape Cod Ark The Cape Cod Ark was built to see if it is possible to grow food in the Northeastern United States’ climate through the winter in a greenhouse, without using on fossil fuels or pesticides. It also was conceived to test whether fish ponds inside a greenhouse would improve the food […]
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Gardening
Gardening Raised bed agriculture was developed in Asia from the collective experience of several hundred generations of farmers. They found it to be the most efficient garden method for sustained, high productivity on the household and community level, with little or no machinery. Raised bed agriculture is energetically efficient and more productive per area than […]
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Greenhouse Food
Greenhouse Food A bioshelter can be used for cold-season food production, limited mostly by how cold it gets at night in winter, and how much growing space is available with full sunlight over the whole day. If the temperature is maintained above freezing, many garden vegetables, particularly cold-hardy crops that produce greens with edible leaves, […]
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Tree Crops
A canopy of trees is the natural ecosystem in much of the world. Trees are very efficient in capturing available sunlight, and because they are resilient to weather extremes over centuries. Growing trees that produce useful crops is a compromise between conserving natural patterns of nature for ecological stability, and favoring species of plants that […]
The Green Center 