Intuitive Suburbia: From a Flooded Paddy to a Blueprint for Resilient Living

Intuitive Suburbia is a two-day practical workshop on 26 and 27 September 2026, run by GO Organics Peace International at the Peace Culture Foundation in Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (the Baan Suan Luang Learning Center). It pairs traditional Thai design with permaculture principles and works through land regeneration, natural building and community resilience on a site that shows all three. Thirteen years ago the land was a flat, waterlogged rice paddy with no shade. Today it is a polyculture forest around a family home and a hand-built adobe house, both designed by retired clinical psychologist Teerarat Boripanthakul to stay cool without mechanical air conditioning. Sessions run 9am to 4pm each day and are taught in both Thai and English.

Day one covers the built and biological realms. After a welcome circle and an introduction to the permaculture ethics, the group aligns David Holmgren’s RetroSuburbia framework with traditional Thai self-reliance, then walks the site to read sun paths, wind, shade and drainage before touring the two houses to feel passive cooling, thermal mass and double-roof design at work. Author and poet Prae Jaru leads a foraging walk through the forest canopy and a Krua Raeron (nomadic kitchen) session that turns the harvest into a shared lunch. The afternoon moves to living soil, with jar tests comparing raw paddy clay against 13-year forest humus, and finishes at the TLUD gasifier: loading and top-lighting dry prunings for a smokeless burn, quenching the glowing biochar and inoculating it with compost tea.

Day two turns to the household and to design. Teerarat and Spencer Leung open with a dialogue on homesteading psychology, mental resilience and non-monetary household economies, followed by zone and sector mapping adapted to small suburban plots, homesteads and rental blocks. After a second foraging loop and communal meal, the hands-on design studio has each participant draft a base map of their own home, patio, garden or rental, with individual coaching from Spencer and Teerarat on layout, passive cooling, microclimates and plant placement. A gallery walk and peer critique lead into a personal 90-day action plan and a closing session on the pathway to the International Permaculture Conference in Thailand in November 2026.

The fee is 2,500 baht per participant and includes organic lunches, course materials and a biochar sample to take home. Places are limited to twelve so that the facilitation stays intensive. To book, use the organiser’s registration form, email spencer@goorganics.org, or add GO Organics on LINE; all three are linked from the organiser’s event page, along with a full itinerary and a map to the venue.