Saturday, July 24, 2010

New type of living

Maybe a month ago I saw a document about Michael Reynolds.Garbage Warrior made in UK in 2007 is document about Micheal and his life.

I think I have heard about Mr.Reynolds and his "Earthships" at least once before. These earthships are experimental houses that Mr. Reynolds has been building already for many decades. His goal is to make houses that are made out things that people throw away (e.g. car tyres, bottles etc.). The houses are designed so that they would leave the smallest possible impact on nature and that the houses would be as far as possible self-sufficient when it comes to heating, electricity and water.

The documentary showed that sometimes the rules that we have made to protect ourselves inhibit truly innovative people to try new things. This really bothered me since here is no question about it that we need to develop housing that uses less electricity and natural resources. 

In my home country industrial production of low-energy and so-called passive houses is about  to start in larger scale and that is quite positive sign. Even though these houses consume significantly less or even no energy the downside is that they rely heavily on technology provided by the society. There is nothing wrong with organised society, but sometimes things go wrong you cannot rely on society to provide utilities. That's why I think Reynolds gets it right. Let's make our housing self-sufficient and ecological.

I think what Michael and his team are trying to do is achievable.  At the moment he is building his houses in New Mexico (and I guess also in Georgia) what know about the climate in New Mexico is that it is not the most hospitable. So it should possible to develop these houses so that they work also in places were conditions are less harsh. I just wonder if these houses work in places like Finland where temperature difference during the year can be 70 degrees celsius?

Anyways I was really impressed and inspired by the documentary and if I ever get possibility to visit one of these Earthships I will definately do it. Check earthship.com for more details. The houses look really cool.

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