NPK Theory of Spaces

The NPK Theory of Spaces envisions a network of fully independent, obligation-free loci—urban, rural, virtual, and outspace—where artists and thinkers can find sanctuary, collaborate through commoning, and retreat for renewal, ensuring resilient creativity and self-determined artistic production.

We’re interested in supporting artists in building and owning their own infrastructure.

^{* Disused industrial buildings (factories, warehouses, workshops)
^*Railway stations, depots, and secondary tracks that lost their function
^*Abandoned residential or commercial buildings (common in declining areas)
^*Vacant lots or inner courtyards stuck in legal disputes or left idle
^*Ground-floor retail spaces (especially in peripheral or declining zones)
^*Former public institutions (schools, hospitals, administrative offices) left unused after relocation
^*Technical corridors for networks
^*Protection zones under high-voltage power lines (towers and transmission corridors)
^*Strips of land along railways or major roads needed for infrastructure
^*Other derelict industrial and infrastructural sites and land encumbered by utility corridors or protection zones
^*Abandoned public utilities stations in rural areas (train stations, ports, petrol stations, post offices etc.)
^*Private land subject to public utility easement (burdened with utility easement rights)
^*Farms, plots of land
^*Abandoned, free or low-purchase cost houses in abandoned / depopulated rural areas
^*Freenet space
^*Outer space}

Urban Loci

Rural Loci

Virtual Loci

Outspace Loci

Owning Principles

Sanctuary principle

We believe that providing owned properties, free of obligations or claims of others, as sanctuary spaces for artists, is a critical intervention in ensuring their independent continuation of work, if possible, also in complex, unsafe or dangerous political and social contexts.

Commoning principle

We believe that such owned properties, free of obligations or claims of others, offer combined opportunities for collaboration, especially maximised when people join a space coming from varied backgrounds, disciplines, fields and geographies. A magic self-organised process of jointly producing, managing and using the resources, based on principles of cooperation, mutual aid and self-governance rather than market logic occurs when people come together and interact in such commonly accessible physical spaces.

Retreat principle

We believe that such owned properties, can and shall be used as self-transformative places whereas individuals can find time for re-charge and soul-searching, when time comes for such an inner call.

Land as a gift principle

We understand land not as a commodity to be traded, but as a living generosity. It is a gift that sustains us, one we inherit, care for, and pass on—not something to own, exhaust, or speculate upon. We understand property of land held by artists not as an asset for speculation, but as a measure of protection — safeguarding spaces of creation, care, and freedom.

Acquisition type

Temporary spaces

under loan from their owners (farmers, artist-studios, cooperatives, abbeys, etc.), for the development of artistic projects in collaboration with their owners

Permanent spaces

acquired and maintained as stations used for artistic research and retreats

Our goal is to locate and activate unused plots of land near neighborhoods where we invite artists, designers, architects, and permaculturists to research sustainable and communal eco-living.

offered rent-free by public authorities, in depopulated rural areas