Forests cover sixty two percent of Slovenian territory and this is expected to increase in the future. Recent economic development programs focus on the protection and innovative use of natural resources. These programs have quickly taken into account the effects of the economic crisis that has seen the failure of many wood-based industries as well as the increase of abandoned farmland in the more remote parts of the countryside. From an objective perspective, this space is being returned to nature.

This situation has provided an opportunity to speculate about open questions related to the notion of modernity. From a broader and more contemporary perspective, design inherited the mistaken belief that our culture originates from the Industrial Revolution, long interpreted as a historical development that had the power to generate a new society, economy, and language. Everything that happened during the long process of human civilization before the Industrial Revolution is dismissed as a useless footnote to the present and, more importantly, the future.

The Occupying Woods episode proposes a possible change in perspective: is it possible to imagine and re-enact today the social norms that formed the model of experimental communities developed at the beginning of the 20th century, and thus escape from the rationalization and standardization of so-called modern life? Are we capable of designing new and vital platforms for further human and social development?