Synergia Ranch


Synergia Ranch is an ecovillage founded in 1969 by John P. Allen, the inventor and former Director of Research of Biosphere 2 and Marie Harding, its present manager.
Today Synergia Ranch operates as a private retreat and workshop center for small groups. It is located in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, 15 miles south of the city of Santa Fe.
In the 1970s, businessman and philanthropist Ed Bass was a regular visitor to the counterculture community, later becoming a director of the Institute of Ecotechnics that Allen and other Synergia Ranch members founded, and financing much of their work. In 1984, Bass and Allen launched the Biosphere 2 project, partially inspired by ideas Allen had advocated at Synergia Ranch, such as Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth". Several other former members of Synergia Ranch also joined Biosphere 2.