Paul Richardson gained his Architecture qualifications in London, England, where he studied natural building, eco-architecture, and holistic Architecture. He studied briefly under Malaysian Architect Ken Yeang (Bio Climatic Skyscraper), and other reputable Green Architects/natural builders, Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till, where he came to further develop his understanding of the principles and workings of sustainable design and natural architecture.
In his final Thesis, Paul focussed on a Holistic approach to Sustainable Architecture, bringing together the unseen elements of the world, the sacred in architecture, and combined with natural materials and renewable sources.
After Graduating Post Grad in Architecture, Paul left the UK, and began his working life as an Architect, in the Northeast of America. Here he found himself struggling to honour his path, and found himself in the regular work world, having to support a growing family, and no way to bring to life his studies in Green Architecture and natural building, in any meaningful way.
Working mostly on residential construction projects, ranging from Post and Beam small dwellings, Eco friendly flat pack homes, all the way to multi-million, dollar mansions and beach homes.
After leaving the US in 2011, Paul worked overseas in Asia and Caucus region, delivering projects for some of the wealthiest families in the world. Which included the design, implementation and management of 5 star hotels, Resorts, and VVIP residences and Penthouses.
Although the money was there, and life was relatively easy, Paul became more and more disenchanted with the world of construction, and started to think that Architecture was not his path at all. He experimented with his other passion, music, in the hopes that he may be able to make a difference here, and share his message, but after 2 years of hard work, with several music groups, Paul realized that this was just a distraction, and at the end of 2015, hit a major juncture on his journey.
It was the beginning of 2016, on his 40th birthday when Paul decided it was time to make some drastic changes, and dedicated himself to daily practice of meditation, and self-reflection, to see if he could find peace at least with his present path, and do much needed healing work.
Meditation was helping, but it was in September 2017, after realizing again that he needed to get on his true path, that Paul was called to go to Peru, to the Amazon Rainforest, to spend time there with the medicine men (Shamans).
From there everything changed, and on returning back to Kazakhstan, where he was Project Managing the fitout of 6 star, Hotel, he started receiving details and downloads and found himself with a deep sense of renewed purpose. The creativity and inspiration that had been drummed out of him through the corporate work world, was now back with force (unlike ever before), and Paul became determined not to let this go to waste, and fall back into the comfortable trap of corporate work.
By the end of October 2017, Paul abruptly left his position, after receiving guidance to go to the United States to view a large parcel of land in New Mexico, where he had visions of building a community there, but not only a community, but a living school, that would be an educational and inspiring platform to educate and teach the tools of self-reliance, natural building, permaculture, etc, and facilitate a shift to sovereign community domains.
He founded the concept of Haven Earth, a company that he felt he needed to bring to life to be able to offer some platform to assist with the transition into a community centric model of living, a self-reliant life.
In February 2018, at a workshop on Natural building in South Africa, Paul had a chance to share his vision and designs, and found great reception, especially from the host of the workshop, Alosha Lynov, and few other’s (Engineers and visionaries), who felt a strong connection between their own visions, and what Paul brought to the table, and together they were drawn to work together to make this dream a reality.
From there, Paul and Alosha partnered up, and were invited to be part of a government conference in Moscow, Russia in May 2018, to brainstorm and develop the concept of sustainable cities of the future. Sharing the stage with the likes, as ‘Venus Project’, where they are still working with the main group in Moscow to develop pilot projects outside the capital city, as part of research into creating large sustainable town and city projects somewhere down the road.
Alongside Alosha, and a growing team, Haven Earth Center (partner Bioveda Academy), began to implement small model projects in South Africa and Turkey, and larger, creatively self-reliant community projects in both the United States and Russia.
Paul’s driving force, is to create a platform, that can facilitate the co-creation of sovereign, creatively self-reliant communities globally, that would connect and share knowledge and tools via workshops, online forums, etc, to get the information out to the general public.
He feels it is the lack of viable visions in the public consciousness, that are limiting our progress toward this goal, and by fearlessly sharing and living his truth and walking his path, and actively developing the vision, with the team, that will inspire many other’s to see there is another way, and that these ways are not so hard to reach, if we make the choice to move in that direction, and away from our failing dominant system.
