Prototype development
To workshop the amp prototype with members of the public requires a range of social tools and interfaces as aids to understanding different forms of economies.
Public workshop tools in the forms of games and symbols are developed using colour-coded T-shirts or devising rubber stamp games to illustrate how different currencies and markets can operate within a community and to understand the practicalities involved in community currency creation : the complexities of liquidity, market depth, circulation and currency administration.
For residents of Maison Radieuse to try out the prototype, amp is set up as peconome.
peconome starts with most of the modules in amp to separate and track the circulation of currency within the estate of a thousand people
This has 3 components:
pecobanque which connects to the
Credit cooperatif Banque in Nantes using €s
pecoop the starting cooperative market
at Maison Radieuse (using €s within cooperative markets)
pecos the complementary currency for trading
in the complementary markets at Maison Radieuse. The pecos currency is linked to a time value of
60 minutes = 10 pecos.
To participate in the prototype resident families may register and monitor their own accounts online. All trading is cashless through inter-account transfers.
peconome
The prototype has been developed for use either:
on a community intranet server [for use off the internet]
or
on a secure server online. with the following aims
For detail instructions on download and install,
please read the help text.
Download options:
1 download the amp installer along with all modules and dependencies including the amp theme
or
2 amp cms is drupal based -
if you have an existing drupal based site and would like to add the amp functionalities to it, all the amp modules are available separately
or
3 download the amp theme files separately
Software Developers can get further information from the developer site.
am prototype developed using drupal
Try out the prototype:
amp demo site if you are a member of the public
or
the amp test site if you are a developer
Log in as a guest user.
amp beta is downloadable as a single software file for installation onto a local community server
or hosted on a secure server.
amp prototype
Modelling a participatory social currency prototype based on research at Maison Radieuse and other residential developments as prototypes of high density habitats. The research development combined 2 basic concepts:
a. the structure of modern social life based on fixed, rigid modules or underlying modular (using Le Corbusier's modular as an starting point)
b. a process of crossing over between the fixed modules using the biological concept of the autopoiesis from Varela and Maturana
The research objective is to produce an evolving software prototype that brings together the economic and the ecologic through the concepts of the autopoietic and the modular.
The modular is a modernist tool of scaling in mass production for ease of application into a variety of production processes. The autopoietic is a biological idea based on self-generation with a cognitive understanding of environment. Both deal with reproduction and replication in very different ways.
The working prototype for research may be viewed as a kind of new inhabitant that sees beyond the 'naked eye' for an understanding of potential interactions within a high density environment.
A series of pdfs were produced for workshops purposes:
1 introduction
2 inverting the Modular
3 the autopoietic Modular
4 currency elements
5 integrating the environment
6 microsocial strands
7 software model
8 complementary ecosystem
amp social currency concepts
In these brief 10 minute video sketches, residents from different apartments at Maison Radieuse give us an introduction to the ideas and the practical problems around initiatives through different associational activities.
Maison Radieuse marché
The vegetable and fruit market is now an integral part of the life of Maison Radieuse. Here Abdel Karim Boucham describes how the farmers market came together after the first ecos workshops in 2006. At the time, the market grew from the links with the vegetable allotments and seed exchanges along with various attempts on how best to manage it in coordination with local farmers. Given its sucess in such a short time, Abdel discusses the dilemmas in how best to advance the philosophy behind the market without compromise.
Rainwater Harvesting
The roof at Maison Radieuse hosts a range of resources including a nursery school by Zenakis.
With a surface area of about 1800 sq metres, the roof also has the potential to supply 40 to 60 cubic metres of water per annum through recovery of rainwater. Dominique Leroy explains some of the possibilities for this recovery using collection tanks located in the lifts.
Compostri
The communal composting initiated as an independent association Compostri after ecos 2007 based on voluntary use. Resident bring their organic waste to the compostri every Saturday. Yannick Métriau speaks briefly about the practicalities involved. With the high level of use, Compostri now plans to replace the 3 cubic metre prototype composting shed with one 5 times as large.
The process of developing the social economy takes place as separate threads which can be integrated by residents through associational groups at Maison Radieuse. There are 2 parts:
1 making the components of a potential economy by evolving and then instituting social activites:
creating new social realities in the daily life of Maison Radieuse.
2 optimise potential interconnections between the activities and associations.
How these 2 strands evolve is not entirely predictable but what matters is that through them the nature of the cultural life of what is Maison Radieuse changes with new self-made social institutions.
a proposed working social map:
As a form of social currency, ecosXchange may be based on the 2 realities of today's markets:
1 the Individual consumer
2 the Global Market
ecosXchange mediates between the two, critically creating a new subject in-between and becomes a means of negotiating the space between the global and local, the governmental and the associational.
Maison Radieuse is Le Corbusier's Unité building in Rezé, Nantes.
The building consists of:
290 apartments housing a 1000 residents of which:
50% are socially housed in council apartments
25% are tenants in privately owned apartments
25% are owner-occupiers.
A breakdown of Maison Radieuse' social composition would be: craftsman, small business owners 2%;professional classes 10% ;intermediate professions, employees, working class 63% ;
retired persons 10% ; unemployed 15%.
Maison Radieuse
3 what it does 
[opens in pop up window]
The concept of ecosXchange is planted as a virtual resident in a living context, a piece of evolving software whose programme consists of different operating elements - similar to the way that computer programmes apply themselves to virtual environments. The programme applies itself in 3 modules:
Currency Producer
this creates the currency i.e. underwrites the value of the currency and the amount to be put into circulation. The resources that reduce ecological footprint have actual economic value drawn out of the economic savings made. This VALUE is released as 'shares' or points equitably within the community but tradable only for services and goods that further the aims of ecosXchange through reduction of collective ecological footprint.
Currency Circulator
a software circulates the share value created by the producer. The circulation is the means of linking segregated social processes. The medium of circulation would be cell phones and internet drawing on databases assigned to each apartment cell.
Currency Node
this is a social resource, a new kind of 'bank' where communication facilities and resources to monitor ecosXchange combine with the new complementary forms of exchange.
how it would work
ecosXchange: an idea for a complementary cultural currency is presented at ecos : international convention on eco-creation at Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Rezé, Nantes in August 2006.
ecosXchange
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