§ Syntrociety
A group of people learning to live and work together in a different way, and what it takes to make it hold.
§ What this is
On a piece of land in the south of Portugal, a group of people are trying to live and work together in a different way. One question holds them together. How does a group come to carry itself, without anyone forcing it to?
Said another way: how does order grow from alignment, rather than being imposed? It is what emerges when people learn to live by the principles of living systems.
Syntrociety is not a system you design. It is what emerges when people take responsibility for what is here. It begins with trust. With structure that becomes visible when people start carrying what is theirs.
It is a learning process, not an ideal.
Tension is information.
§ Where this is practised
Quinta da Fornalha, Castro Marim, Algarve.
In the area around Castro Marim, a cooperative has been living and working since May 2023. Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia, registered in June 2025. Members of multiple nationalities. Regenerative agriculture, autonomous energy, consent-based governance.
Three years of work visible in the soil, in decisions recorded as they were taken, and in a daily rhythm in which work and life are not separated from each other.
Visit Sulitânia (coming soon)§ What this asks
This work is not light.
It is messy, it chafes, it asks for maturity.
But when it holds, something emerges that carries itself, and does not collapse the moment control falls away.
Read further: The story · The essay on two cultures
§ What we make
What we make is a set of tools. A Charter, a working practice, a research framework, meant to make what grows here visible and shareable.
What the federation builds is not a finished model, but a toolset that lets Labs learn from each other, and that makes what is learned visible to anyone wanting to research the work or make it possible. What funders and policymakers ask to see is, it turns out, the same thing the work itself needs. So we build it once, and it serves both.
§ The practice
The federation is held together by three practices that every Lab keeps in the open.
01 · Open registration
It is the ground that makes the rest honest.
Each Lab logs its daily practice into SYFERS, the public framework that holds the federation's data. Researchers, funders, and other Labs can read what we do.
02
Decisions move through Council. A proposal is heard, refined, and either adopted by consent or returned for more thinking. Every decision keeps its trail.
03 · Handbook
The federation's Handbook is generated, continuously, from the decisions Council records. What you read in the Handbook is what we have actually decided. There is no version that says one thing while we do another.
§ Where do you recognise yourself?
Each leads to the perspective on federation work that a reader in that role tends to want first.
Mayor or administratorLab or Lab residentLocal entrepreneurCitizenResearcher
Syntrociety is what emerges when we stop building systems, and learn to live as part of a living system.
We are a federation in formation. The work continues, on the place, as it comes.
Become a Lab →