The extended family dwelling — the irreducible unit of regenerative life, where food and belonging begin. Six adobe domes around a central core with shared kitchen and workshop. Energy — electricity, hot water, and space heating — is supplied by the Guild's central reactor.
Eight compounds clustered around a shared hub — 50kW downdraft gasifier, moat-mounted agrivoltaic solar, trout raceways, ice production, and a circular greenhouse housing the reactor as solar trap.
The full civilisational unit — self-governing, with its own commons, education, health, and culture. Permaculture zoning from agora centre to wild nature edge.
Intertwined ruban cells spanning the globe, tessellated by natural corridors where wildlife and the biome embrace us. Coordinated by the Ruban Operating System.
The first scale of belonging is domestic. Trust is daily, reputation is immediate, care is material. The compound home is the irreducible whole from which everything else emerges.
Below one hundred people, everyone knows everyone's contribution. The Knell is the first thing built. Pioneers arrive with tents and a tool container. When the reactor delivers heat and light, the guild is replicable.
At ~960 people the cell reaches the cognitive threshold Dunbar described. Beyond it, identity dissolves and governance must become bureaucracy. The answer is not to grow — it is to replicate. The reticular fabric scales without ever losing fraternity.
The outermost ring is unmanaged, wild, deliberately untouched. Where two cells draw close, it is wilderness touching wilderness — a seam, not a wall.
Circles cannot fill a plane without leaving gaps. Those gaps are permanent wildlife corridors — the geometry itself reserves ground for nature, unbroken across the entire topology.
No part of the layout is neutral. The built environment encodes governance, care, and the metabolic intelligence of the settlement itself.