Minka LabMaloka

The Minka Lab Maloka serves as an important gathering place for knowledge sharing and intercultural exchanges.

Minka Lab is a dynamic [agri]cultural project that was founded a decade ago by a group of artists and environmental activists from Colombia, Germany and France. Since its inception, Minka Lab has developed safe space for intercultural exchange where local indigenous groups, small farmers, and Afro-Colombians are empowered and where their knowledge is valued. Minka Lab works to help these peoples "resist isolation and marginalization through the development of sustainable agro-ecological practices that not only revitalize the earth, but recuperate culture and strengthen community".(minkalab.org)

The maloka (also spelled "maloca") that Alternative Futures helped design and build serves as an important place to gather, celebrate different cultures, exchange narratives, and share knowledge. Traditionally, indigenous groups in the Amazons built malocas as communal places of dwelling. Other indigenouse communities such as the Páez or Nasa use the maloca for sacred rituals. Though different peoples and cultures have different uses for these structures, they are always a place where people come together.   

This form of the maloka was built as a way to connect the ancestral value placed on the circle, manifest this is three dimensions, and use the geodesic articulation as a system to construct a sphere (hemisphere A above ground, implicit and implied hemispere B below ground).