Fallow Thinking
Fallow Thinking was a research-led summer school exploring how architectural practice might engage with degrowth, soil, and agricultural heritage. Taking Laxton’s open-field farming system as its primary context, the programme investigated the long histories of fertilising practices, dovecote infrastructures, and rural power relations that shape contemporary landscapes. The summer school positioned fallowing as a methodological and spatial concept—an “active rest” that questions continuous cycles of extraction, production, and demolition. Through site visits, deep mapping, drawing,
model making, and speculative storytelling, participants examined the entangled relationships between agriculture, architecture, and global resource networks. The programme moved from documenting existing agendas to developing speculative proposals for architectures of degrowth and multispecies resilience. Outcomes included drawings, models, motion graphics, and performance-based presentations. The summer school framed the rural landscape as a productive site for rethinking how architecture can support long-term ecological reciprocity and community resilience.
Year: 2022
Location: Loughborough and Laxton, UK
Mission: Circular Economy; Sustainabilty / Ecolog
RaRe Actors: Robert Schmidt III, Cagri Sanliturk , Cansu Curgen-Gurpinar, FRAUD.... Theme: Regenerative Design; Ecological reciprocity; Degrowth
Output: Essay; Film; Mapping; Physical Model
Methods: Deep mapping; Speculative Deisgn; Storytelling; Model making