WHOLE EARTH REDUX Feature | Matthew Halpenny
April 1, 2026
Speculative Life Biolab
Speculative Life Biolab
Image: Whole Earth Redux, Gray Area, 2026. Courtesy of Gray Area.
Matthew Halpenny contributed to Whole Earth Redux, a special issue revisiting the legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog through contemporary practices of ecological thinking, technology, making, and systems design.
His chapter, Gardening Regenerative Energy: An Integrated Systems Approach to Sustainable Technologies, builds on the 1974 Energy Primer: Solar, Water, Wind, and BioFuels, exploring how its accessible, community-oriented approach to sustainable technologies can inform contemporary responses to the climate crisis.
Drawing on Halpenny’s research into open-source microbial fuel cells, the chapter investigates “energy gardens” as an alternative model for thinking about regenerative technology. Microbial fuel cells are considered not as isolated technological devices, but as components within living ecological systems that depend on ongoing relationships between soil, plants, microbes, water, and human care.
His chapter, Gardening Regenerative Energy: An Integrated Systems Approach to Sustainable Technologies, builds on the 1974 Energy Primer: Solar, Water, Wind, and BioFuels, exploring how its accessible, community-oriented approach to sustainable technologies can inform contemporary responses to the climate crisis.
Drawing on Halpenny’s research into open-source microbial fuel cells, the chapter investigates “energy gardens” as an alternative model for thinking about regenerative technology. Microbial fuel cells are considered not as isolated technological devices, but as components within living ecological systems that depend on ongoing relationships between soil, plants, microbes, water, and human care.
Through this systems-centric approach, Halpenny considers how sustainable technologies might move beyond extraction toward models of regeneration, maintenance, repair, and symbiosis. The chapter combines research, design experimentation, and accessible technical knowledge to explore how small-scale, community-oriented technologies might create new relationships between energy systems and the more-than-human environments in which they operate.
