MARTIN SCHULKE

Born in Seattle & raised on the west coast, Martin Schulke is an accomplished woodworker and craftsman fascinated by buildings & structure. Martin is a true Jack-of-all-Trades, having been a Village Builder Director, VBC Building & Construction Coordinator, contractor, rancher, gardener, teacher, shipyard rigger, logger, photographer, restauranteur, non-profit organizer, and friend to almost all materials. His vision for the Gira Sol project has inspired artists, builders & creative minds alike.

Originally the Rancho los Gira Soles, the farm produced cattle, hogs & barley. Now fallow, the Gira Sol Ecovillage will rest on land that has been in Martin’s family for more than 30 years. This reconception of place is an investment into the future of the valley, as we strive to be a model for sustainable growth by asserting a permaculture presence.

MARK LAKEMAN

Mark Lakeman is a co-founder of the non-profit City Repair Project organization in Portland, Oregon and serves as the Co-Director of Creative Vision. Mark is also the founding Design Principal of Communitecture, a leading edge private ecological design and planning firm.

City Repair is a multi-disciplinary, non-profit organization which works with place-based communities across the North American continent to creatively transform the infrastructure of the public commons where people live. The goal of this work is to engage communities at a personal scale, where the overall challenge of the global commons comes home. Mark has overseen the ecological placemaking activities of City Repair since it’s founding in 1996.

Whether converting street intersections into public squares, or organizing other forms of permanent or phemeral place interventions, City Repair is effectively engaging citizens in the reinvention of he public landscape. All of these projects are ecological in emphasis, using natural building and permaculture techniques. City Repair-inspired projects are underway in more than a dozen cities in the USA and Canada, including citizen-driven designs for the Winter Olympics of 2,010.

After working for several years in the 1980’s as a lead designer of large scale corporate projects, in the 1990’s Mark embarked on a series of cultural immersion projects with indigenous societies in order to derive placemaking patterns which could be applied to urban settings in the United States. These patterns include broad participation, local ownership, transference of authority to local populations, creative expression in planned and unplanned processes, and social capital as the primary economic engine of change.

Lydia Doleman-Lakeman

Lydia Doleman is the founder and sole proprieter of Flying Hammer. She often collaborates with other independent contractors and sustainable businesses in Portland and beyond.

Lydia has been building since she first stole her sister’s legos at age three. With a background in ecology, sculpture and social justice her path was cleaved when she met a group of women in Missoula Montana creating the perfect synthesis of those three elements: they were building a straw bale house.

Lydia attained an internship with Solar Energy International, which became a six year immersion into the rich culture of renewable energy education and straw bale building in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado.

Leonard Barrett
Scott Ankeny
Shannon Jackson
Katie Selin