HU Institute: a living ecosystem of ancestral and modern wisdom

HU Institute is being born in Furnas — a valley of over 37 distinct types of thermal and mineral waters, recognized by UNESCO, bubbling up through ancient volcanic basalt on São Miguel island in the Azores. It is one of the most ecologically extraordinary places in the Atlantic world, and one of the most quietly powerful places on Earth.

The Azores archipelago hosts a unique concentration of endemic biodiversity found nowhere else in Europe, including the Hylaeus azorae, a native polyester bee that exists only on these islands, alongside 19 wild bee species moving through a landscape where endemic laurel trees form cathedral canopies and the boundary between the cultivated and the wild remains soft and alive.

The land arrived carrying the marks of previous use — chemical inputs, invasive species, interrupted ecology. But beneath it all, valuable endemic species persisted, waiting. Restoration begins by listening to what the land is already trying to do. The master plan follows the intelligence of contour, water, and soil, structured around permaculture zone planning, syntropic agriculture, and keyline design. Specially engineered swales follow the hillside contour, slowing and sinking massive amounts of rainwater. Basalt retaining walls built in the traditional Azorean way terrace to mitigate the soil erosion, using as many native plant species to support erosion measures.

In the agricultural zones, diverse polycultures mimic forest structure while producing abundance: avocado, mango, banana, coffee, guava, papaya, mulberry, and turmeric growing in layered syntropic systems. Vegetable gardens, herb beds, mushroom and micro-green greenhouses, beekeeping, and a small animal farm extend the harvest and the reciprocity with the land and local community across all four seasons. Local ferns, bamboo, endemic trees, and flowering shrubs create layered environments where indoor and outdoor life dissolve into each other.

Running through all of it is a single understanding: healing is not something we do. It happens when the conditions for it are restored, it happens naturally. We see this in the land itself, when invasive species are cleared and assisted rewinding occurs, the local biocenosis of a region returns. HU Institute is being built as a physical embodiment of this principle, a place where the landscape is itself a teaching. It is creating the conditions to meet it with full attention — through ceremony, ecological restoration, thermal bathing, food, community, and the kind of stillness that becomes possible when a place has been genuinely cared for.

This is the permanent home HU Institute has been moving toward through a decade of work across continents. A place where ancestral wisdom and regenerative practice find their ground together. We look forward to having you visit.