Earthship on ABC TV

[Eclipse Now]

Anyone who wants to watch it can do so at ABC iview, an online viewing platform that works quite nicely. See the left hand column "Catchup", it's Grand Designs, episode 5, Brittany.

ABC iView | Internet TV Service

Imagine it... they're almost debt free with no utility bills. Just utility bills alone can cost up to $2500 or $3000 a year. Over maybe 30 or 40 years of owning the place... you do the math.

[lemit]

Lawcat's deniably dismissive language about the original structure here suggests there is something ugly about the house, which I find to be extraordinarily well designed. I wish in the architecture contests I was involved with the winners had looked half that good and had had a tenth of the engineering.

--lemit

[Eclipse Now]

To be fair, I hadn't posted the best shots / images yet, so Lawcat was just responding to what I had put up there. But the "Grand Designs" Brittany earthship was finished to a VERY high degree of detail, and looked beautiful.

Even though many of the Earthships in New Mexico are beautiful in a hippie, alternative "Spanish meets fantasy" kind of way (which I like!)...



... there are moves to "domesticate" Earthships for the mass market in the UK. If that can happen and this concept can become more mainstream, all the better!

Most Earthships in the US take on an unconventional form. They have fairy-tale like features that remind one of the works of architects like Gaudí and Hundertwasser. But others, like the 16 Earthships being built in Brighton (picture right), hardly look any different from conventional houses. These more traditional forms may help with the general acceptance of this type of building method by the general public.

Built up environments

Until now, most Earthships were built in isolated places, where most people live in built-up urban environments. The problem with the feasibility of an Earthship is the size of the plot on which it is built. This plot is significantly larger than the size of a conventional house.

But the idea is flexible enough to adapt to different situations. When an Earthship is built, earth mounds are formed, which in turn may provide support for another Earthship, and so on. The result would be revolutionary and unconventional. However, in response to the recent warnings from the International Energy Agency, unconventional and revolutionary ideas need to be adopted if we want to help prevent a worldwide fight for energy.

© Kris De Decker (edited by Shameez Joubert & Vincent Grosjean)h(es)
Low-tech Magazine: Heat your house with car tyres and earth

[Moontanman]

The idea of living under ground is a good one from the perspective of energy efficiency. In most areas of North America it's cooler under ground in the summer and warmer in the winter. Like a cave the earth evens out the temps year round. There is no reason underground can't be luxurious. I like the Concrete domes by American Ingenuity. They can be set and then buried underground by simply pushing dirt over them with a bulldozer. with just the cupolas sticking out of the ground for natural light and ventilation they make a very energy efficient way to live.

[Eclipse Now]

Hi,
yeah I googled them and they had some links to this interesting Youtube piece on old Bucky!

YouTube - Geodesic Dome

But this earth-bag home is a more low-tech, low embodied energy version of the same idea.

YouTube - Eco-Dome - Trailer - Full film...

More here...

Cal-Earth - (The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture)

[Eclipse Now]

Another concept for under-ground living.

Sietch Nevada is a futuristic concept city that envisions a dystopian water-hoarding society where drought is a constant state and wars are fought over water. Designed by Matsys Designs, the underground city is situated within a network of tunnels and caverns that offer protection and water storage, creating an oasis in the desert. The dense underground community includes a network of waterways and canals enclosed by residential and commercial cavern structures that form an underground Venice so to speak.

[lemit]

I love the designs. Please show me more.

One thing we shouldn't forget is that it's also energy efficient to keep structures that have already been built. Historic preservation is very important.

Reuse is better than recycling.

--lemit

[Eclipse Now]

Originally Posted by lemit

I love the designs. Please show me more.

The best place is the Inhabitat architecture threads.... just browse back their last few pages here and you'll get the vibe.
http://www.inhabitat.com/architecture/

Gives you marvels like this...

Robotic arms attached to the building would move the pods around to optimize growing conditions. Voids are created when the pods are reconfigured, leaving behind space for public parks or botanical gardens. Bio-fuel created within the pods is used to power the robotic arms and the remainder would be used elsewhere, possibly to assist construction. Once construction is complete, the pods could be taken and reinstalled on another building and be reused. As Höweler + Yoon says about the project “This is anticipatory pre-cycled architecture, capable of generating a new micro-urbanism that is local, agile and carbon net-postive.”

The desert city stuff was from this link, but the rest of the images are a bit more abstract and basically illustrate how the city shape itself would collect what water falls in the desert, and collects it underground to be continually recycled. The domes, I take it, are for closed loop agriculture without water loss. Local water, and local nutrient cycles (sewerage into food etc) are essential for a post-oil world anyway, so maybe this idea has legs in some format or other?
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/15/...ricken-future/

One thing we shouldn't forget is that it's also energy efficient to keep structures that have already been built. Historic preservation is very important.

totally agree, IF the region we're discussing is worth preserving. However I think it is safe to say that much of the bland McMansion McBurbs are merely designed to give us a McLife, and so it would be better to consider how we can quickly add a 'town centre' to the suburb that a good level of density and diversity of function can be added in. With enough Urban Infill, supported by maybe trolley-buses (5 times cheaper than trams), and then the surrounding suburbs might have something to plug into. Without it, the same chaos in 'town planning' that we call suburbia will continue to dominate.

A great podcast well worth subscribing to (fee) in iTunes is
KunstlerCast

I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.

- James Howard Kunstler,
from The Geography of Nowhere

There's a few more pages of Earthship images here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthshipkirsten/page8/

[lemit]

I have always been a fan of Lewis Mumford's city planning concepts. A lot of what you say reflects his liveable cities, in which there is a mix of buildings and landscaping, everything designed to prevent the need for powered transportation--including elevators.

I like design that complements the surroundings. The wasp's nest design doesn't look like it would complement any surrounding. It also looks like it might present some engineering problems.

Am I the only one who sees a vast difference between the first designs in this thread and the last? I would not want to preserve those buildings.

Except that, if they were still standing after several years and were, with any luck, the only ones of their kind, I'd want to preserve them for their historical significance. Preservation isn't only for the best design. It's also for the significant, the unusual, and the contextual. There are neighborhoods that should be preserved because as a whole they constitute history. There may well be parts that have to be excised, but that should be done only with caution.

My house is 50 years old, and a botched mix of 50's bungalow and ranch. But it's also in a designated historic neighborhood, so I am restricted in the remodeling I'm doing. That's fine. I don't want to change this house I've known pretty much since it was built. I want to keep it and the neighborhood and the city as much as possible. That's one of the things architecture should do.

--lemit

[Moontanman]

Many people get so caught up in green housing they forget that tearing down and building new is extremely energy intensive. Many of the older houses and building were built with superior materials that are not even available today. I know some people who are obsessed with the whole green thing that want to tear down the world and rebuild it but it's not only not practical it's not energy efficient either