Permaculture, Place-Making, and Planet Repair

with Mark Lakeman, February 22-23, 2020

Course Information

Join Mark Lakeman, visionary architect, designer and co-founder of the City Repair Project, for an exciting and informative weekend workshop focusing on social engagement and place making design processes as the context for individual and community design. Mark will run us through several design exercises and observational activities, using participatory processes and models, to create alternative patterns to address systems of isolation and oppression, while developing networks and guilds of all scales. The discussions will focus on engendering a rebalancing, healing effect on social culture by restoring interaction and identity, spatial place and gathering environments that fuse people and nature back together, stewardship culture and intergenerational connection, and then cyclical cultural rituals that proceed from all of this being back in place. Mark will also present on various case studies of projects he has worked on of various types and scales, as well as an innovative, exciting large-scale permaculture project he is working on in the Bay Area.

Course Instructor

Mark Lakeman is a co-founder of the City Repair Project in Portland, Oregon, and served as the Co-Director of Creative Vision from 1995 to 2008. He is presently active as a core member, overall mentor, and project coordinator in City Repair’s annual urban permaculture festival known as the Village Building Convergence. Mark is also the founder and principal of Communitecture, Inc, a cutting edge eco-architecture and planning design firm with sustainable building and planning projects at all scales. These highly popular projects include such social-ecological innovations as The ReBuilding Center, numerous ecovillage projects and urban infill co-housing examples. Many current projects involve low income and homeless people in the self-development of tiny-home based villages. All of these initiatives were developed out of the Planet Repair Institute, which Mark co-founded, including PRI’s acclaimed urban permaculture design course which is currently taught in collaboration with Permaculture PDX and Witch Hazel Inc.

After working for several years in the 1980s as a lead designer of large scale corporate projects, in 1988 Mark embarked on a series of cultural immersion projects with numerous indigenous societies in order to derive place-making patterns which could be applied to urban settings across North America. These patterns include broad participation, local ownership, and transference of authority to local populations, creative expression in planned and unplanned processes, and social networks as the primary economic medium of change. His travels lasted until 1995 when he returned to Portland to undertake a series of creative, culturally restorative initiatives. His cooperative initiatives include the Last Thursday Arts & Culture Project, The City Repair Project, Communitecture, Inc., the Intersection Repair Project, the T-Horse mobile public gathering place, Dignity Village, the annual Earth Day celebration of localization, and the Village Building Convergence (VBC), and Planet Repair Institute.

Course Dates

Saturday and Sunday, February 22-23, 2020, 9:00am-4:00pm

Course Tuition

Regular – $300 (Early Bird – $285, until January 15)
Students* – $275 (Early Bird – $250, until January 15)
PRC Alumni – $285 (Early Bird – $265, until January 15)
*PRC diploma students will receive 1 PDRE academic credit for this workshop.

Course Registration

To register, please click on the registration button below. Full payment is due at time of registration to confirm placement in the course. Payment can be made via MasterCard or Visa, debit, cash and cheque.

Withdrawal Policy

For course withdrawals submitted in writing or in person 30 days or more before the start of the course, registrants will receive a full tuition refund less a $40 non-refundable registration fee. For course withdrawals submitted in writing or in person more than 14 days but less than 30 days before the start of the course, registrants will receive a 50% tuition refund. Without exception, no refunds will be given for course withdrawals less than 14 days before the start of the course.