The realm of environmental structure is in one of the worst crises in a century, particularly in N. America.  The global financial crisis has devastated the building industries and have taken down many tangential industries with it, architecture being a primary one.  According to the AIA own accounts, 50% of its firms are out of business and most of the nations architects are out of work. Almost every architect we know is either struggling or completely out of work.  One of the biggest and oldest firms in Pennsylvania has laid off 80% of its architects two years ago and is still in a state of attrition.   Anyone who has read David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years will understand how deep and systemic the problem is and how the industry is not in a short-lived cyclic downturn but an epic crisis that will not be resolved in anyone lifetime unless all debts are forgiven.  

So for an industry that relies heavily on credit availability, there is a very high probably that the overwhelming majority of the next several generations of American architecture graduates will never practice, will in fact, never make a building of any substance their entire life.  Generations of talent, dedication, skill and ability wasted in the face of so much need is reminiscent of a story of a late, Soviet-era architect who was a master model maker. To the question of how he got so good at making models, he would dryly respond that to see one's designs made, you make models because there was no money to make buildings in the last decades of the USSR.  There is also another ugly truth revealed in the last few decades and that is that the profession itself is so severely comprised by the edicts of finance and the developer driven model, that most common architectural designers struggle against almost inhuman forces in the quest to produce decent buildings and spaces.  Hemmed in by narrow economic imperatives of finance and the techno-fantasies of post-modernity, trapped in the ecology of capitalists social relations and industrial production, the ability to make places humane and socially responsive, ecological integrated and liberating is near impossible. 

The future appears dim for those who love making buildings and space yet can find no outlet for their passions and ideas. In many ways, that is good as it forces to think and act differently and discover new ways to work.  It is obvious that a different way of realizing built form is desperately needed less we find ourselves consigned to a world of crumbling shit-box dwellings laying in the shadows of megalomaniacal starchiture.  

In that light, EA is a place-making collective looking of a few spirited souls for whom buildings are life and life is building. We are presently situated in central Pennsylvania but on the way to northern Vermont to begin a larger scale, community-based social project. The collective's members have been crafting custom, sustainable dwellings and spaces for the last six years and design/building conventional structures for over thirty years. Our communal workshops, living spaces, and gardens are situated on eight acres in a rural setting.  We are currently looking for two to four new members to grow and  evolve the collective's social research as well as its design/build methodologies and production abilities. Our present workload consumes much of 2012, thereafter, we are planning to relocate the collective to northern Vermont.

We are seeking range of individuals/ families interested in community life where place-making – in all its complexity - is the primary social activity.  If you have design/build skills or the desire to learn them this is what we are looking for:

• novice architectural designers who want to build
• builders with knowledge of conventional and alternative methods
• craft-workers – timber-framers, masonry, etc
• artisans, artists with ceramic, steel or wood experience
• apprentices/laborers
• a farmer or two

There are currently no formal positions or corporate body to the collective to which to apply to since we tend to eschew corporate entities. We do not approach building as 'business' nor view one's worth or purpose as service to profit seeking so the nature of the collective's structure is presently un-legal and egalitarian. As it evolves it will take on a more formal structure but the spirit of its members is that we are working a blank page. Our internal economy is primarily gift for many reason as the collective is a communal life situation and does not offer the prospects of a 'job' to which one secures money to fund one's 'lifestyle' wholly independent of the collective's life and work. Nor do we exist to advance one's career ambitions or design fantasies. 

Collective life requires commitment to an evolving process, to work, to social life, skill and knowledge development outside the traditional experience of work and the conventional range of design/build skills. We engage in wide range of activities that we relate to building, from theater and acting practice to research on embodied cognition and cognitive extension.  We believe that buildings are ultimately expressions of lived social relations between all the elements of a landscape, embodying the metaphors and narratives used to make sense of the world.  We view contemporary relationships and processes as inimical to human and environmental well being and changing them one of the great challenges of future generations.

Our design/build activities are inspired and guided by many sources but of particular interest to us are the ideas and practices articulated by Christopher Alexander in his Production of Houses, A Pattern Language, and in particular, The Nature of Order series.  The buildings and spaces we create are designed and built collaboratively, largely handcrafted, using local materials whenever possible that are natural or found/re-purposed.  Nearly all work is completed by ourselves and our clients with minimal subcontracting.  The design process is fluid and unfolding, a non-linear, non-rational, reiterative, and embodied as we endeavor to produce socially and ecologically integrated buildings specific to our clients needs, to the landscape as well as generating meaningful, sustaining work for ourselves.

In seeking those with design/build skills and experience, we are far less interested in who one is under the present circumstances, what you've done, and where you are in life, than what one can become within a unique set of challenging circumstances where creating environmental structure is the daily life of a community.  There is no separation between work and play, between employer and employee, between designer and builder.  If you are looking for a 'job' so you can afford a middle-class lifestyle good luck on your quest but if you have an interest and affection for people, place-making and craft, possess  an open, thoughtful and critical mind and understand that the price for change is passion in all its forms then we are interested in speaking with you.   We are open to those from many kinds of situations - those with no resources to those with too much. However, the dominate ideology of Individualism is of little interest us so the self-absorbed ego tends to be an unwelcomed force in the landscape. For those with families, we also happen to love children and homeschool/unschool a small band that is always running wild around us, so families and single parents, dysfunctional or otherwise, are especially welcome.

If you are interested in this way of life, email us at collective.eabuild (at)gmail.com , tell us your story and include your CV/work history if you have one, photos and any other tidbits of interest. We will kindly return the effort and with greater detail.