I. SPARQ - Design Connect & ARQ - Designing a Solar Punk ARQ Future - Spring Semester 2026

We've got some really exciting news for ARQ! It's the excitement of possibilities, of planning for uncertainty, of dreaming of a hopeful future (where we're still doing our thing here for another few generations), building on our shared histories, and looking forward to what "could be" both on our little country road, and in our larger society.

Last fall ARQ co-owners submitted our first ever application to the Cornell Design Connect program. Design Connect is an interdisciplinary, student-run design organization at Cornell University which provides practical experience for graduate students by delivering planning and design services for local communities.

ARQ (and our growth years as CRAQ) was the life-long vision of David Van Nostrand, and while he sometimes accepted advice (rarely, and generally still tempered by his own opinions), the full concept of what ARQ could become grew out of his own lived experience in shared communities and as an artist and builder.

Since David's death in 2023, we've sought out A LOT OF ADVICE on how to make this complex inherited dream actually work. One recommendation we had was to seek out help for some of our plans we didn't quite know how to realize.

- How to add more studios of the style and type we often get requests for
- How to continue our shift towards green, renewable, and sustainable energy systems
- Building out on our food producing systems (gardens, orchards, bees, a thriving ecosystem of reciprocity)
- Figuring out a model for financial sustainability

Our on-site nerd enthusiasts made the connection that our "vision" encompassed a lot of what some hopecore dreamers call "solarpunk".

Wikipedia says that "Solarpunk is a optimistic literary, artistic, and social movement...that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community."  Solar Punk dreams of a just and equitable future in which technology, arts, agriculture, ecosystems, and community work together in collaboration. ARQ is unique in the regional landscape for how much we have embodied this ethos as a rural community intentionally built to provide affordable shared work and living spaces for artists and craftspeople inspired by the natural world.

And that's the dream. A future that still has quirky art and craftworks made at Carman Road for decades yet to come, providing affordable housing and studio spaces in Hector so that locals can continue to afford to make art (!!! radical we know), living with and beside a natural ecosystem that is healthy and thriving with healthy waterways, food systems that feed our residents, and repaired environmental spaces.

We're calling that dream SPARQ. And this semester we're working with a team of grad students to help us plan solutions for this future!

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Whether we think of this as keeping the fires burning, letting the spark of past creativity light our way to a new future, just know that we’re trying to keep to our roots. We aren’t trying to become something new, we’re trying to become something that can sustain, grow, expand, and encompass the needs of different generations.