“When it comes to green architecture, many recycled things come to our mind from clay houses to PET bottle construction. One example of such environment friendly architecture is the world’s first Plastic Bottle Village located on Isla Colón in Panama. The entire village is made from over a million recycled PET bottles. Built on 83-acres of tropical jungle, the village consists of nearly 120 houses and a lodge.
General
Burdei Homes
“The first order of business for any pioneer family was to make sure that they had shelter. In the Ukraine, some of the very first houses were simple huts that were made from sod and logs. The name for this structure was “burdei.”
Pre-cast Rammed Earth Panels
More interesting news from David Easton’s rammed earth company: “Our sister company Rammed Earth Works continues to develop technology for pre-cast veneer rammed earth panels made in our Napa factory and transported to job sites.
Eco-Homes: People, Place and Politics
Jenny Pickerill is a professor of environmental geography at the University of Sheffield, and I met her when she was conducting research for this book, gallivanting around the world on a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travel Fellowship. She interviewed me and we toured a variety of novel eco-homes near Crestone, Colorado, where I was living at the time. In addition to Crestone, she visited ecological enclaves in Britain, Spain, Thailand, Argentina and other locations in the United States.
Her purpose in assembling this academic study into ecological living was to focus more on the social, geographical and political issues around eco-housing, which are often ignored, in the hopes that a broader acceptance of sustainable architecture will evolve. I found her analysis enlightening and well worth the read, if a bit academic in its outlook. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a different filter, which in total provides a good understanding of the issues involved.
The first chapter focuses on the eco aspects of eco-homes, and why this is important. She observes that “eco-houses are being built to deal with the issues of waste through structural innovations by altering size, harnessing renewable technologies, retrofitting existing housing stock and changing occupants’ behavior and practices. Each approach has benefits, limitations and financial costs.” She goes on to chastise government and industry for emphasizing the technical fixes while ignoring simpler solutions.
Next, Jenny delves into the home aspect explaining how hard it is to define what home really is. Home can generally refer to country, state, city, bioregion, neighborhood, as well as a specific house. We have an emotional attachment to our homes that must be recognized in order to make eco-houses appealing to a wider audience. The emotional component is affected by aesthetics, location, style, privacy, comfort, and worth.
Outside the Box: Off-the-Grid Living with Josie and Abe
“What if the only bill you had to pay was for the internet? Imagine what you could do with all of that extra money.
Imagine how little you’d have to work for the man! You would be able to sustain yourself on very little monetary income, and invest more of your time into the things that mattered.
Transforming an Airstream Trailer
Our final stop on the tour of Asher Gelbart’s off-grid homestead was a work in progress of incorporating an old Airstream trailer into a larger architectural project. Asher is holding up a model of this concept, which would not only feature a spiral roof covering most of it, but also earthbag domes.
The roof structure was mostly intact, and some earthbag retaining walls were established, but much work still needed to be done to manifest this vision.