On Friday 24th February, 2012, a seminar by Biotecture on Earthships was held at Bond University’s Cerum Theartre on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Three weeks prior to this date, an article in The Weekend Australian Magazine (February 04-05, 2012), reported on Michael Reynolds’ company and his structures that he calls ‘Earthships’ – see Burning Ambition. The attached images showed an interesting sculptured home that the text elaborated upon in some detail, explaining the philosophy behind this approach to housing. It was seductive. Tyres and general trash were the basis of this technique of construction that used energy-saving principles to service the interior living spaces that could be kept at a comfortable 21 degrees celsius with nothing but natural heating and cooling in all climates, both freezing and tropical, passively, without any extra energy input. The house also grew all the food that a family of four would need. So confident was Mr. Reynolds of his proposal that he guaranteed to pay the extra utility running costs if they rose above $100.00 per annum.
It all sounded romantically idyllic. Cheap housing, no huge
mortgages, comfort and beauty, for the materials seemed cheap and the images
attractive. The article spoke about a couple in Kinglake – Daryl Taylor and
Lucy Filor - who had lost their house in the Victorian fires. They were going
to construct a new home on their site, an Earthship incorporating the ruins of
their old home, because these Biotecture buildings were also fireproof. The
budget for the greenhouse face of this project is $260,000.00. The remainder of
the house is to be built from recycled materials. The article seemed to suggest
that the total is probably less that a conventional home that relies on traditional
energy input, but this is not clear. Still, the Earthship appeared to have an
answer for everything. The article noted that Mr. Reynolds was coming to
Australia to start work on this house and give some seminars. It seemed to me
that Biotecture needed more research, so Google was clicked.
It took only two web sites to discover that Mr. Reynolds was
travelling north to the Gold Coast to give a seminar during his visit. His
plans were to speak at more detailed sessions in Adelaide and Melbourne, but
the Gold Coast and nearby Bangalow were going to be given an opportunity to
hear Mr. Reynolds’ story too – just $28.00 per person. So tickets were booked
on-line. Well, a payment was made and a receipt was received. One supposed that
this was sufficient evidence for entry. It is interesting to ponder just why
little Bangalow, of all other places in Australia, was selected to be on the
list for lectures. Does it have a large ‘hippie/greenie’ population that might
warm to the Earthship ideas? Did Mr. Reynold’s have a potential project in the
vicinity? And the Gold Coast? Still, it seemed an interesting matter to follow
up.
Friday was a rainy night that made the approach to Bond
University along wet, reflective roads only more confusing than it appeared to
be as roundabouts wove their tricks. Even the campus map and university signage
did not help much as main signs faced away from one-way traffic flows, making
one manoeuvre around extended loops to discover the information being
displayed. It was a frustrating start to a planning/design evening. Why are
institutions so blind to the needs of the stranger? Surely good design
accommodates all with dignity, simplicity, grace and ease rather than causing
repeated frustration and failure? Is this the problem with the ‘look-at-me’
design approach?
One was stamped on the wrist at the entry and then allowed
to settle into the theatre to listen to iPhone users engaged in their own
self-important performances. With the advertised 6:45pm start stretching out to
just after 7:00pm as others dawdled in, the introduction was finally made, not
for Biotecture, but for a movie to be shown at the Gold Coast on 5th
March – Wasteland. It seemed that this production had something in
common with Mr. Reynolds’ work - rubbish - and might be of interest to those
who turned up to hear the Earthship message - building from trash. The subject
of the film was apparently the making of art out of refuse and the generation
of good feelings amongst the workers on the tip. It looked interesting. It had
won many awards. Awards seem to confirm something for some just by their
naming, without anyone really knowing the details of what or why.
Mr. Reynolds eventually took the floor and immediately played a short video of his work in Haiti. It was a tiny project – a 12 foot-diameter hut built using his system. It displayed in miniature the principles his Earthships were based on. It also highlighted the potential social impact of such a strategy for housing in third-world countries. The exuberance of those involved became a joyous display of song and dance that seemed overly excessive in relation to the actual outcome. One could only assume that the potential was enormous. Still, this little hut did cost $4,000.00 – modest but still a challenge for Haiti. Just how these huts could come to replace the tents in a structured and organised manner to suit the community’s social demands was sketched only diagrammatically, but was never exposed for any considered review or analysis. The critical issue of such environmental strategies is not how the one shelter might work, but how the many might operate as an organism. One unit can be made to look beautiful, but one hundred? What are the public spaces like? What hierarchical arrangements are to be used for villages and towns beyond ordinary geometrically patterned design layouts? Without a successful adaptation strategy for quantity, environmental approaches such as these will remain quirky asides, unique wonders, rather than global solutions.
Thoughts wandered as the video finished and Mr. Reynolds –
everyone was now calling him ‘Michael’ as though he was a long-lost friend –
started his presentation. He explained that his houses were not for hippies,
greenies and social dropouts, even though he struggled to find an image that
could illustrate appearances to prove this point. Most photographs showed
peculiar forms and shapes that recalled the ‘hippie,’ ad hoc, self-build forms
of the 1960s. Eltham mud brick houses came to mind. Almost as an apology he
tried to suggest that his homes were normal on the inside, and flicked quickly
through images that tried to display this concept – smooth walls and normal
furniture. But even here, the eccentric sculptured detailing appeared in parts
as fireplaces, columns, ledges, seating and claddings. All tyres and trash had
been concealed, covered in plaster. Only the cans and bottles that had been
built into the concrete walls could be seen as decorative panels and friezes.
Little self-deprecating jokes fluttered throughout Mr.
Reynolds’ presentation as if to make him appear foolishly brilliant, perhaps
rather like the cliché absent-minded professor or the misunderstood guru. He
explained that he had lost his architectural registration in Mexico so had to
invent the name Biotecture for his sustainable architecture. Apparently the
silly officials did not like the sewer in the living room. The subtext might
have been that they failed to recognise genius. These little jokes only
appeared to stimulate the audience into little indulgent giggles of agreeable
bemusement that highlighted the hagiographical course of the evening. Mr.
Reynolds spoke of his disquiet with the word ‘sustainable’ as he had once been
shown a ‘sustainable’ nuclear reactor. This playing with meanings is a core
problem with things green, especially with the ‘green star’ calculations that
take numbers as a framework to prove experienced performance, as if additions
and quantities equated to anything other than a mathematical total of items
arbitrarily labelled ‘stars,’ perhaps inspired by the ratings of movies or
hotel accommodation. All of this serious calculation seems randomly remote from
reality when, say, the ten bicycle racks, showers and lockers, and, say, the
fifty small car parking areas at the front door that could add the extra star
or two might never be used. Yet the star rating is still the statistic promoted
in the boasting about a building’s ‘green’ quality. The same cynicism with the
relevance of hotel ratings where stars can be gained for an extra chair and a full-length
mirror, or lost because of a dirty spoon or lack of a corkscrew, lingers in the
mathematics of green buildings. It seems perfectly possible to have a six-star
pigsty as well as a six-star academic building - perhaps side by side?
Mr. Reynolds explained how he used locally available trash – tyres, tins, glass bottles, paper, plastic and metal panels – and anything else that might be able to be collected nearby. He elaborated on the systems of air extraction and intake, and passive heating and cooling that would keep the home at 21 degrees celsius. His graph seemed to suggest a variation between 19 to 26 degrees, but this was never spoken about. The plumbing was traditional plumbing that had additional ‘bio loops’ attached, thus cleverly giving the local authority all of its specific requirements while solving the environmental challenges of zero emissions. The layered approach to comfort meant that the outer, warmer, brighter layer of glazed, greenhouse volumes could be used for growing food. Bananas and other plants were illustrated. Protein was available from fish living in tanks. All water was stored and reused in a cycle that saw rainwater treated to three different levels for different uses, to then be run through gravel beds for plant nutrients and subsequently used to flush the toilet. This waste then moved on to other planting beds for more food supply. It appeared as though the great vision of perpetual reuse had been solved, giving enough of everything for a family of four, forever, for almost nothing. One could only be impressed - amazed. Was it really possible?
Mr. Reynolds then stretched the idea further. He was
obviously aware of the question of repetition – housing as clusters forming
villages and towns: how does the model work for these situations? His images
showed great linear strips of repeated homes with the front, glazed space
becoming a transport corridor. It looked like a pedestrian way, but wasn’t this
the hottest, therefore possibly the most unpleasant part - the greenhouse? How
could it be a comfortable communal corridor? Then a 3D model video of how the
system could be developed into a multistorey scheme – perhaps for China –
flashed onto the screen. It used Corb’s basic 1920s classic slab and column
framework infilled with the stepping Earthship homes and fitted with a large
stair spiralling around a vertical axis wind generator. It was unclear how one
might get from the stair to each house. The diagrammatically attractive moving
3D graphics were quickly skipped over to display a proposed scheme for New York
– real highrise? Well, it looked to be only a two-storied below-ground
development between two high Bronx browns, serviced with a giant mirror to
catch and reflect the light down into these low spaces. The sketch was so schematic
it was difficult to interpret accurately, but Mr. Reynolds’ enthusiasm seemed
to overcome all possible doubts. One wondered: how would a street of these
developments work?
The problem with this form of housing is not the one-off
solution. The Bruce Goff/Herb Greene/Antonio Gaudi sculptured free forms in
open country - desert, forest or mountain - always look beautiful. It is as
though nature has been cajoled into a new difference using the same principles
that made earth to provide habitation – a place for man and for his spirit to
grow and glow. The context becomes a raw harmonic resonance that enhances the
seeming reality of a mystic presence in these homes. Just how gathering these
structures together might provide an equivalent quality on a larger scale
remains unknown. Even basing a school plan on the geometry of a pretty blue
flower, as Mr. Reynolds showed later, does not give the building any essential
floral or subtle quality beyond the visual delicacy of the primary match. This
numinous patterning may have nothing to do with the functioning of a school
with its demanding social requirements, in spite of the suggestive illusions.
One is encouraged to interpolate matters in this change of scale by
transferring every nice feeling about the one into the conglomerate clustering
of the many without ever really knowing just what the social implications might
be. The patterns of villages and towns are never ad hoc or irrelevant. Their
specific shaping is just as important to the functioning of the whole entity as
the tiny spaces and details in the home are to the wellbeing of those living in
it.
It is strange that China is noted as a place suited for the
multi-storey version of Earthship, as if social need and poverty together might
find its awkwardness acceptable, through the necessity of poverty: beggars
can’t be choosers? The proposal is a rather incongruous collection of Corb and
dirt without any vertical limits. What on earth (no pun intended) is going to
happen to the gridded spaces between the columns and slabs behind the stepping
standard homes – well, Earthships – that have been slotted into one edge of
this reinforced concrete frame that could apparently go up to ten stories or
more? Potential heights beyond three levels were not illustrated so the details
of the idea were never displayed. These rear spaces appeared to offer all of
the nasty threats of car parking areas and under-bridge spaces. In the same
way, it seemed that the grand strips of transport corridors in the linear
proposal would offer no great charm beyond that apparent in the high-rise
apartment block that has external balcony access - like the infamous
Priutt-Igoe model of modernism. Gathering for town-making is much more complex
than simple multiplication and extension, and requires more subtlety and care
than town planners seem to be able to bring to their profession that now has
uniquely large numbers in this present world - more than ever before - but, in
spite of these quantities, it remains a world with an alarming number of grand
failures in outcomes. Our cities are getting worse in spite of all our planning
efforts, be these performance-based or otherwise.
The magic and mystery of the impossible – beauty and comfort
for nothing, (well, for little or less) – is something everyone aspires to. Any
suggested solution is easily enthusiastically grasped and held up as the work
of a genius. Things are even better if the concept has been built – at least
once. Mr. Reynolds enjoyed a heroic response on this Friday at the Cerum Theatre.
There was a strange, over-agreeable, unquestioning feeling about the man with
the long grey hair and broad accent. Do Australians still get excited about
different voices, vowels and appearances? Do Australians still cringe at the
accent and assume immediate superiority in the difference? The cringe came
later in the evening when the moderator of the appointed expert discussion
group embarrassingly asked Mr. Reynolds to say ‘banana’ once more –
‘ban-ann-na’ came out in contrast to her ‘barn-narn-ah.’ The response was a
little squeal of delight - “Oh, isn’t that beautiful?” Well, no. One could only
wince in silence, suppressing a whimpering cry of dismay. The moment was trite,
like her manipulation of the crowd that was asked to exhale with a communal sigh
to release the tensions of greening the world. The loud chorus of “Ah” only
seemed to suggest that most were intoxicated by the genius of Mr. Reynolds and
willing to play silly games compliantly – on call, to order, as if to overtly
display this emotion to our visitor. What did Mr. Reynolds think of this?
The standing ovation that thanked Mr. Reynolds for coming
“all of this way to talk to us” seemed to ignore the fact that Australians
themselves are well travelled, are not unfamiliar with distance and difference,
or intimidated by it, and should know that Mr. Reynolds is here to promote his
company. The naïve colonial response to the stranger left one bemused, as it is
this unthinking approach that sees no problems with the apparent answer to the
challenges of the universe. If these matters are to be truly respected rather
than blindly deified, then they need to be reviewed and criticised in the
Popperian sense of things scientific - conjecture and refutation. Accepting
conjectures without any refutation is never useful if one wants to get to the
true heart of a matter. It is like debating with another who is never willing
to change an idea or concept, and offering criticism to deaf ears. One must
never be afraid of the challenge of questioning doubt. It can only improve
matters – well, those beyond determined preconception that knows, and wants to
know, no other possibility.
Earthships? The name is interesting. This home is likened to
a ship. Ships are solitary objects that interact with the world and nature
alone. Even in fleets they are singular. They do not like gatherings or great
numbers as these cause anxiety about collisions. They need to keep their
distance and unique identities. They are internal, turning their hard,
protective outer shells to the environment as they house and shelter the
occupants in homely comfort, in all weathers. The Earthships seem to do
likewise. Is this the problem with their multiplication? They have only a
front, literally turning their back to the world. What will happen to the
backyard barbecue? The ‘cheap’ version of the Earthship - Mr. Reynolds
acknowledges that his attractive promotional ‘Phoenix,’ (rising out of trash?),
is expensive and elitist - becomes an uninspired, one-dimensional, small glass
entry wall with graphic red flowers hiding the tyres. What happens when the
flowers drop? Is the aim perhaps to minimise the most expensive part of this
home – the glazing? While some cultures like the frontyard exposure for private
living - I was told that the Turks in Cyprus love such displays - Australians
are more reserved and love not just wide open spaces, but also the privacy of
the backyard. What does the Earthship model offer other than potentially cheap,
enclosed environmental bliss and food tucked into an earthen berm? What are its
civic roles? What is its real potential in sets - in towns and cities?
The facts of habitation and performance in Mr.Reynolds’
presentation were very thin, all glossed over quickly as though they were
undisputed truths. Providing your own protein with fish from the tank? He
illustrated this with a child catching one fish with an overly long rod and
then cooking it. The camera panned in to show decorative red carp gliding under
the water plants. Are these fish or plants edible? What are the details for
fish production? What space is required? What numbers? What is the cycle for
sustainability? If a family eats fish three times a week, as some dieticians
recommend, then at least a dozen large fish will be required every month; a
gross in one year. What infrastructure is required to achieve this outcome? How
many banana trees are needed? How many other plants and varieties have to be
cajoled to continue production 24/7/52? Plants have cycles and seasons, as the
Bible tells us everything has. Just what has to happen to allow for a constant,
sustainable supply of food for four? Merely feeling good and happily
enthusiastic about the possibility and being won over by singular images of
luxurious green growth and fertile productivity is not enough, for this glory
could be a very short-lived possibility.
One feels a little awkward asking questions about such an apparently beautiful concept for life and living, with its grand ambitions for the human spirit, but if the facts are ignored, there is nothing. Beauty must rest on facts and figures if it is to have depth and substance. Ephemeral dreams of possibilities need only pretty pictures and inspiring words for their sustenance. Mr. Reynolds is an enigma. He is rooted in both worlds of dream and fact. He ponders, promotes and builds. He knows the problems: how the challenge can become the criteria for creativity; how flexibility and adaptation are critical. He is sensitive enough to know that his approach cannot just be blandly reproduced for the Australian aboriginal shelter. He is an ardent promoter of love and care for our environment and in our lives. He has produced beautiful living conditions from waste. He is a realist. Just how he chooses to develop his idea beyond the pretty one-off and the singular, stand-alone structure will be of interest, for the world needs more than hope and love to survive, let alone thrive.
Sadly the fact is that we have a capitalist society. While
Haiti and perhaps China might have tonnes of waste doing nothing and available
for nothing, the developed world is already collecting and recycling waste.
This has its own cost. One has already seen, with the growing popularity in the
recycling of building products and other materials, how the management and
supply of these items has become organised as businesses. Prices soar as demand
and interest grows. Many years ago I purchased some old leadlight windows and
doors for a refurbishment project. The windows were $20.00 each and the door
was $70.00. If I were to try to buy these today, I would be asked to pay
hundreds of dollars for each item. The idea has caught on. One can envisage a
future of Earthship popularity where tyres become expensive, and where dirt is
a valuable commodity. There will always be someone ready to make money out of
this situation, in spite of the idyllic dreams. Such is the so-called developed
world. It has already happened. Recycled materials are expensive now. A
finger-jointed length of timber that is made from random off cuts is more
expensive that the one piece of timber cut from the tree. Why?
Then there is the debate about local government building
approval or certification. Everyone knows that government institutions are
metaphorical brick walls. Look at the Bernard Madoff situation where a Government
body was told repeatedly for nine years that Madoff was a fraud, but took no
action. Natural market forces had to finally expose him, not the questioning or
any investigation from the governing body. Our institutions are just as
reluctant to take bold steps in spite of the facts. It is this apparent
grandstanding when everything says otherwise that makes governments so
frustrating. Earthships need more questions. Multiple Earthships need greater
review. But the dream must be kept alive and not squashed by bland bureaucracy.
Hero-worship and blind enthusiasm gets one nowhere. Rigour is critical. Mr.
Reynolds knows this. Let’s hope he retains his ideals as he seeks to grow his
dream. Let’s hope that Earthships can be truly tested for performance, both environmental
and social, and prove to be a success. Living comfortably in an awkward social
situation will never be satisfactory. The award-winning Pruitt-Igoe proved
this. Facts are needed to match feelings on all scales.
It is suggested that Eartships are DIY – that everyone can
get grand poetic outcomes by using trash. I suggest that the outcomes Mr.
Reynolds showed us of his efforts rely a lot on his unique skills for their
resolution - that Earthships cannot become beautifully assembled trash without the
feeling, skills, knowledge, understanding, ambitions and the creative energy of
Mr. Reynolds himself. His homes are unique. His solutions and approaches are
his alone and require his input for their wonder. They are indeed beautiful –
but I suggest personal. Beauty is never a necessary outcome of a DIY
enterprise. It is usually otherwise. It would be interesting to see the results
of the DIY projects that have not had any input from Mr. Reynolds. Apparently
there are thousands (two thousand) but none were shown at the seminar. The
movement implies that Mr. Reynolds’ creative, intuitive and inventive
efforts/outcomes can all be replicated by others, but is it so? This perception
leaves everything in an amorphous cloud, a little like all of the stories, facts
and figures in this concept for recycling where, as Mr. Reynolds explains
somewhat in jest, (but many a true word is said in jest), power is needed
primarily for charging the iPhone and iPad.
One has to wonder what is wrong with a recycling strategy
that uses some chosen trash as it ignores the tonnes of other waste generated
by our society, like the ever-growing number of batteries that are discarded
daily - in Australia at least - from our gadgets and solar devices: our iPhones
and iPads and the like that were mentioned as part of the story, as a humourous
aside? Are we dealing only with a quaint trendy fashion - here today, gone
tomorrow? Is it a ‘feel good,’ distracting cringe by the 17% of the haves to
the 83% of have-nots of this world - a quick moral fix to overcome guilt? There
are lots of questions still to be addressed. Feeling good is just not good
enough. It is indulgent and gives us ill-considered signs like that at Bond
University - looking the wrong way. We need to make sure we start looking the
right way and asking more questions rather than being mystified by accents and
longhaired strangers or our own importance.
So how does one encourage students to develop an interest in
recycling? Should one? It was suggested that Bond University might build an
Earthship, (even though it may never be used as a home), to have its
architectural students involved in its construction as an exercise. There is
something close to the obscene here: to have students paying tens of thousands
of dollars a year training to recycle trash, has a quality that does not appear
genuine or in tune with the feelings of the primary raw intent. The world is
topsy-turvy. I have recently seen real ‘grass roots’ recycling in Penang. Folk
who earn as little as 16 – 20 ringgits a day, (six to seven Australian
dollars), collect the smallest of items and quantities and take them to the
local agent in the nearby shop house that is filled with heaps, piles and
stacks of refuse that have been weighed, sorted and organised ready to be moved
on. All this is done for a small but modestly critical payment of cash. I saw
the hotel maid dragging two large plastic bags of plastic bottles to this
agent. It was trash she had collected from the rooms - perhaps her ‘pocket
money,’ but I think it is more essential, more necessary than this idle luxury.
Others load their bicycles high with the waste to transport it for cash –
anything has some value, even a few cardboard boxes. I watched a man shell
garlic bulbs just to collect the outer layers for reuse. Boxes of orange peel
lay out in the sun drying to be reclaimed. There is a necessity here -
something genuine and in scale with the lifestyle where metalwork is still
carried out by a human hand tapping with a wooden mallet, making letter boxes,
cake tins, stainless steel downpipes, copper floats and more, while sitting on
the floor. The blinds that give Penang’s its characteristic tropical charm are
all assembled slat by slat in an identical shop house to that of the waste
merchant’s store and the metalworker’s workshop. Similar spaces are used as
retail areas for the gold merchant, the local restaurant, the chemist, and the
haberdashery shop. The model of this patterning works well.
We need a more sincere involvement in our building, care and
understanding, and should not be satisfied with some indulgent worshipping of a
design messiah who is making 1960s structures with some passive energy
additions for an unknown future that is optimistically promoted as positive. It
may not be. It will take much more to attend to the problems of our world than
some Earthships and a few bananas, no matter how one might choose to pronounce
this word – but it is a start, a start to get people thinking more seriously
about what we must do in our world and how we can achieve this. One can only
wish Mr. Reynolds good luck.
NOTE:
29th
November 2019
After so many years,
earthships still make the news:
Alas, the action remains on the quirky side of climate change that governments
are still just speaking about, doing nothing but spin around and
around in baffling circles.
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