am is the development site for a prototype that connects our economy with our ecology. It is a way of connecting participation in different kinds of economies as a means of sourcing our basic living needs. am has emerged out of work at Le Corbusier's Unité D'habitation in Nantes and other high density high rise urban developments; however am is a virtual entity, a software without reference to any particular building or context.

am creates an integrated economic environment, an ecology which contains a variety of functioning modules and possibilities for participation in consumer, cooperative and complementary markets. Not all may be relevant when applied to any particular person or living context; the idea is that it is flexible and evolutionary as a working process. am allows the possibility of creating connections that consumer and financial tools do not allow at present. am may be applied in trials or workshops in different ways in different situations but it is designed to evolve and change in a reciprocal relationship with any social environment.

am has 4 working modules which inter-relate via different factors or variables that connect economic activity and ecological footprint. These are like valves connecting different aspects of our environment as an economy. Through them, the objective of am is to provide a simple structure with accesible interfaces so that the average consumer can begin to connect different threads of economy with a bearing on social and environmental ecology [explanatory pdf ].

am is being developed under a revision control system subversion so that any software developer interested in the relationship between economy and ecology can contribute to am. The repository can be accessed by both svn and webdav here. If you want to participate in the programme development email the team.

am is abbreviated from autopoietic modular, the concepts it is built upon [background].
The first release of am is scheduled for mid October 2008 [work layout].