Most people think of home as four walls and a roof. For Andrew Faust and Adriana Magana, that myopic view is the problem. Permaculture educators and consultants, the two have dedicated their livelihoods—and their 14-acre property—to modeling a more expansive concept of home. They founded and designed their Center for Bioregional Living in Warwarsing, which is part residence and part classroom, to unapologetically challenge how we think about shelter and what it means to live well. “Permaculture design is systems design,” explains Magana of the ethos behind the evolving live/work project the couple began in 2011. “Everything is connected. Our goal is to broaden the lens of ‘home’ to better understand how systems interrelate, how this world works, and come up with new solutions.”
But before Faust can show me around, he is momentarily waylaid. A former student, one of thousands who have graduated from the permaculture courses the couple hold onsite as well as in Brooklyn and in Vermont, has stopped by for some help. “We’ve never been focused on this place as solely our home,” says Faust of the 1,800-square-foot brick ranch flanked by rain tanks, a biodigester, and various natural workshops and sheds scattered across the former hay farm. “It’s always been a place where people can learn.” For Faust and Magana, home is what happens when you refuse to live small.
It’s a beautiful day to wander the land. Set on a quiet backroad, the property is surrounded by a mix of agricultural land and woodscape—a kaleidoscope of greens under a blue summer sky. Dwarfing the three-bedroom house, the former front lawn turned mini-meadow is a riot of bright red butterfly weed, yellow coreopsis, and purple coneflowers. Out back, galvanized metal garden beds teem with last of the spring lettuces and the first summer squash and beans. Mature oaks provide deep shade for the home’s south face, and strands of Chinese chestnuts, pecans, and hickories will be harvested in fall.
Walking through the idyllic setting abounding with food and maximized resources, it’s easy to shrug off the idea of catastrophe. Permaculture can be beautiful but “it designs for disaster,” explains Faust. “If you aren’t thinking about how to live in a manner that’s adapted for the present system collapsing, then you aren’t really paying attention to how vulnerable, fragile, and unethical the present system is.”
Faust has some strong opinions and an uncompromising view on what constitutes ethical living. Whether you think our present system is on the verge of collapse or not, the home Faust and Magana have built rises to face the present moment. “We live on a planet in outer space that’s rocketing around the Sun at 67,000-miles-per hour so things are going to happen that actually are very unpredictable,” says Faust. “There’s volcanoes, there’s meteors, it’s an incredibly dynamic system. Permaculture is basically adapting to how the planet works.”
The Path to Right Livelihood
The seeds of Faust’s commitment to ecological living were planted during his childhood in Pennsylvania. “My parents had strong ethical views, which led them to join a Quaker community,” says Faust. “The tradition emphasized nonparticipation in things that are unethical.” He attended an alternative high school, and studied Latin and Greek with a tutor in his free time. His study of classical civilizations sparked an interest into the reoccurring patterns that confound cultures—especially deforestation. “It’s one of the major mistakes that many cultures have made that we don’t seem to learn from,” explains Faust. As part of his studies, he lived with a clan of Romani people who traveled in horse-drawn carts, traveling through Greece for 10 weeks. “It really showed me what a good life I could live without much stuff,” he says.
However, it was his father’s death from cancer while he was at university that focused his life’s work. “I began to understand the toxic legacy of industrialization and how much cancer is a result of pollution,” he reflects. This loss, combined with his strong sense of ethics, sparked his vocation. “Right livelihood is an important concept for me as an educator,” he explains. “We have an ethical obligation to create livelihoods that have ecological and social integrity to them. If we’re not doing that, we’re abdicating our moral responsibility to ourselves and the world.”
After his father’s death, Faust spent the next eight years in West Virginia’s mountains, building a fully off-grid, straw-bale home and educational center, a project that would be the basis for his PhD dissertation in 1999. He then moved to Brooklyn—where he taught urban permaculture design certification courses and met Magana.
Banging the DIY Drum
Magana spent her childhood in the San Diego area exploring the mountains and beaches, often on horseback. “I was always outside as a kid,” she says. “And I had many mentors who taught me to grow my own garden, harvest food, and land-based practical skills.” Coming from a family of musicians, Magana took up the drums and spent five years touring with the band Crash Worship before settling in New York City where she played drums for Hungry March Band and started the popular underground performance venue Happy Birthday Hideout.
Magana’s introduction to permaculture came through her experience squatting on the Lower East Side in the ‘90s. “Both squatting and permaculture have the same DIY ethics—taking care of your community and meeting your own needs by learning skills and mutual aid,” says Magana. “Permaculture offered philosophical avenues to reimagine our man-made world. It was a great gift.”
Put on Your Permaculture Goggles
When the couple began house hunting in 2011, their criteria went far beyond conventional real estate considerations. They were searching for a property that could serve their larger mission of creating a home and demonstration site accessible to students and others interested in whole-systems design. “We specifically came because of the proximity to New York City,” says Faust. “We wanted to have hands-on courses teaching permaculture design and ecological literacy. We also liked the creative community up here.”
Faust didn’t want to start from scratch, again. “I spent eight years building and living in West Virginia,” he explains. “It was formative, but once was enough. I wasn’t going to do that again.” Instead, they looked for properties they could adapt. “We put our ‘permaculture goggles’ on,” says Faust. “That meant we were looking for southern exposure, proper drainage, easy access, and good bones and framing.” The property also needed the right mix of woods and meadow.
Though conventional, their 1950s three-bedroom, two-bath ranch was built by a jeweler who incorporated quality materials throughout the construction. “We liked the natural wood-paneled interior, the local brick, and the stone fireplace at the home’s center,” says Faust. “There was also copper and high-quality metals throughout. The home was in good shape.” Along the western edge, a wide, screened-in porch is elevated over the garden. “It adds lots of potential to the house,” says Faust. “In summer we cook and eat out here. Also, we’re able to host dining events, classes, and guests.”
The landscape also suited their purpose: The home was positioned at the property’s high point, it had southern exposure for passive solar gain, and plenty of former hay fields that could be reforested or used as a laboratory to experiment with new permaculture building techniques and materials.
Perpetual Harvest
After moving in, one of their first projects was harvesting the rain. “We began by adding a 1,500-gallon rain tank filled by the house’s gutters,” Faust says. By positioning the tank high on the property, they catch and hold water for optimal gravity-fed pressure. Faust also built a carport from locally harvested, rough-cut hemlock serving multiple functions—providing car coverage while supporting both an additional rain tank and a grid-tied solar array large enough to power the entire house as well as an electric vehicle.
Faust then installed a biodigester off the screened-in porch. The concrete tank collects the home’s sewage and then, with the help of some enzymes, converts the waste back into fuel for their summer kitchen. The bio-digester has proved to be a functional waste-to-energy system and a teaching tool for students. “What I’m doing at my own site is research and development for things that I thendo on build-outs and consultations for clients,” Faust explains.
Out back, they transformed the former farm into an educational demonstration site. A straw-bale cabin in one field was a hands-on natural building experience; an outdoor classroom in another is central to Faust’s classes, and a cob oven is the site of community meals. These structures serve as living laboratories where students learn natural building techniques while creating self-sustaining infrastructure.
Faust and Magana have created something much larger than their 14-acre living laboratory and home—they’ve created a growing community of enthusiasts and home service professional committed, and equipped, to build a sustainable future. That future is growing from one of permaculture’s most foundational aspects. “The permaculture movement is not about setting people up to isolate themselves on a homestead,” says Faust. “This is about redesigning the whole Northeastern corridor for self-reliance and sustainability.”
“Permaculture is about building community,” Magana adds. “At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships.”
This article appears in September 2025.
