This amazing video by architect Gordan Clarke is very enlightening and inspiring. Note the keywords in the title — Traditional Green Building. That’s a key concept often missing in today’s green building movement, where granite countertops are imported from Italy, exotic woods from far off jungles are turned into furniture, etc. to build high end ‘eco mansions’. In contrast, this video shows how simple, natural and affordable housing can be.
The Ethiopian bamboo builders deserve a lot of credit. They are obviously master builders with many years of experience. They’re able to skillfully turn virtually free natural materials into a home that can last 70 years! That really is amazing. Let’s say you didn’t want to build a house like this yourself, you could hire a crew and probably have it built for under $1,000 in Ethiopia. Guestimated cost: 10 workers x $5/day x 15 days = $750 plus materials. That means the cost of housing spread over 70 years would be practically nil.
These bamboo houses are popular with tourists, so while you’re at it you might as well build a few more to rent. The biggest problem may be getting decent Internet service…
Awesome. Green building comes from green energy. Hope more people can see this.
Owen Geiger, thank you for your blog post.Really thank you! Awesome.
Great skills, great people !
Videos like this really get me thinking about how I can use these ideas my life.