Wood is being cut in the Carpathians' foothills, where the terrain is still hilly and wolves, bears, and lynxes roam freely, because a part of the forest was not recognized as a national park. In the 1950s, it planned to become one, now it's not even a nature reserve any more. In 2021, it was planned to cut 30% of forest, all the big trees, ones that are not declared as natural monuments. A significant portion of the forest has never been threatened because it is on a slope and getting there with machinery used to be too challenging. To put it another way, it is a virgin forest next to a national park. If roads are built now to go into the forest, that's not only bad for the groundwater (water then flows out of the road and is no longer "caught" in the forest), but also for the bears, who built their sleeping quarters at least 2 km from the road. Many endangered species of lichens and mosses live here, as well as woodpeckers and protected owls.
Therefore, on January 3, the protestants intervened to block the way in. With two sky pods, "Wilczyce" (pol. the female wolves) protects the forest in place, because the petition and blockade from the forest management company is not enough. The occupation is called Nora 219. Nora is the Polish word for wolf’s burrow, and 219a is the number the forest management company gave the piece of forest.
SETTLEMENT FOR OCCUPYING FOREST
Proposed treehouses are creating settlement for protesters. Based on a modular system that can be recreated by people without previous carpenter or construction experience. Depending on needs of community, treehouses can be strictly living spaces with various ways of co-living or community spaces with rooms design for organizing next protests. Constructed in a way that makes a building resilient to police intervention and having minimal possible footprint by using pillars that extend the treehouse above the ground. Modular system makes treehouses easy and quick to built, with opportunity to re-use materials and rebuild after possible evictions.
MODULAR SYSTEM
Taking inspiration from a shape of ’Czech hedgehog’’ I developed a modular system that can be used for various ways of protesting, from simple lock-ons, barricades, stages to shelters and treehouses for occupying, for example, forests. Dimensions of the system are based on 25 cm, 50 cm, 150 cm dimension in length and a beam of a section 7 cm by 7 cm. Modules exist in three possible shapes and are easy to assemble by protesters on site. Provided with basic instructions, every protester would be able to create one and assemble what is needed.
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