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177.
THE JOURNAL OF THE NEW ALCHEMISTS #7 (Woods Hole, Mass.: New Alchemy Institute, 1981).
Ed. Nancy Jack Todd. 4to. Wrps., 176pp. Illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps and charts.
The New Alchemy Institute was co-founded on a farm on Cape Cod in 1969 by "scientists with countercultural leanings", John Todd and Nancy Jack Todd. With their stated aim to do research on behalf of the planet, they pioneered investigations into organic agriculture, aquaculture, and bioshelter design using observation of natural cycles and processes as the template for creating sustainable systems.
This issue of their journal, the last one to be published, includes a special report on "The Village as Solar Ecology". A year later, the Institute was visited by Buckminster Fuller, who gave their newly constructed dome his approval. Designed by his disciple and former Whole Earth Catalog editor, Jay Baldwin, it was the first 'pillow dome', made of triangular panels of transparent plastic inflated with argon gas, the same technology behind the Eden Project in Cornwall. Partly due to cuts to government grants during the Reagan era, the NAI eventually dissolved in 1991.
Near Fine, with folded poster of The Ark, a bioshelter built by the New Alchemy group, loosely inserted.
