Rhizome:
An expanding underground root system, sending up above ground shoots to form a vast network. Difficult to uproot.
The Rhizome Collective is a non-profit organization based out of a warehouse on the East Side of Austin, Texas. The Rhizome Collective operates an Educational Center for Urban Sustainability and a Center for Community Organizing. They are a consensus-run organization.
Rhizome’s purpose is the design and display of functioning ecological tools and technologies, created to give communities greater self-reliance over life’s basic resources: water, food, energy production, waste management, shelter and remediation of toxins. By having this systems open for the public to learn from and interact with, they hope to educate and inspire others to continue the work of building locally based, decentralized, radically sustainable infrastructures. By doing so, they hope to ease humanity’s transition into a post-petroleum future, and simultaneously undermine oppressive powers that maintain resource monopolies.