Living Underground Is Looking Better All of the Time!
The above image is Owen Geiger's Subterranean Survival Shelter Plan, available on our website. Last night, I stepped outside around midnight. It was a relatively balmy 63 degrees outside. This…
Having to do with the earthship design style.
Inside Our Earthship Inspired Earthbag House
A House for the Future
Most of Us Were Never Taught to Use Resources Intelligently. The Infrastructure of Our Civilization Has Been Built on the Assumption That There Will Always Be Unlimited Materials at Our Disposal and Access to Extravagant Amounts of Energy to Waste.
What is Natural Building? Is It All or Nothing?
In This Post I Examine What the Term Natural Building Means. I Talk About Earthbag, Straw Bale, Cob, and Environmental Impact.
The Organic House by Javier Senosiain
Here’s a modern hobbit home that uses some very sound design principles and has a decidedly organic feel to it. It was designed by Architect Javier Senosiain and was built in 1984. Javier mostly used cement with metal reinforcement to accomplish the sensual curviness of this structure. Much of the same feel could be achieved with less impact using natural building methods such as earthbag or cob.
The Beauty of Bottle Walls
My first exposure to the concept of bottle walls was through one of Mike Reynold’s earthship books. Mike developed the idea of earthships in the 70’s when recycling was in it’s infancy. Landfills were filling up with glass bottles–a foolish waste of an amazing material. What Mike found was that you could build walls of amazing beauty and durability, that evoke the feeling of stained glass, by using these discarded (dare I say, “disgraced”?) receptacles.
Building our Earthship-Inspired Earthbag House
In 2014 our small intentional community purchased twelve acres of prime land in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Over the next year and a half, we helped our community members build infrastructure and their earthbag house. In the spring of 2016, we began work on our own earthship-inspired earthbag house.