While the legend is that an Earthship can be built in a few
weeks, that does not seem to be most people’s experience. Most often, builder-led
projects take from a few weeks to 2 months. When doing it on your own, an
Earthship can easily take 2 years to build.
The design and permitting process can also take years - first,
learning for yourselves, then training the local code enforcement officials. With
planning and permitting, a build can as long as 5 years. Are you ready for a
multi-year camping adventure? Can you afford a hotel/rental for that time?
Regardless of HOW you do it, you need a plan as well as cash flow to pull it
off.
The Myth of “Will Perform as Expected in Any Part of the World, in Any Climate” or, Reality Check: There is no such thing as a Global Model
We love the idea of a convenient one-size-fits-all approach
to design. However, the Global Model promise is one that fails to deliver, in
Earthships, and an every other kind of architecture. The reality is: Not every
building works in every climate. There is a thousand years of
architectural and archaeological evidence in New Mexico that backs up this
fact, and tens of thousands of years of evidence from around the world.
Cultures migrated and modified their own home designs as they went. They did
not do so because they were trying to be stylish or to merge with the new
culture. They adapted to the new conditions because they needed to stay warm in
winter and cool in summer. The only things they had to work with were natural
forces like the sun and physics (gravity, thermal and liquid dynamics, etc.),
the materials and tools they had available to them, and history. It was
anything but convenient to have to adjust, but they did, because they needed to
in order to survive.
Let’s try an exercise. We are going to give you a new
religion. We will not tell you what religion it is, but it is not from here,
and we do not care what you were brought up as. We just want you to start being
that religion, today. OK? Ready Set Go! What? You do not love that idea? Good,
because we are not going to ask you to do anything of the sort because it is
preposterous. It is, however, a decent metaphor to illustrate just how absurd
the concept of a Global Model of design is for architecture. Many of the
underlying reasons why a Global Model is infeasible are the same as why we
cannot adopt a new religion from somewhere else around the world on a whim.
First, there are cultural concerns. People around the world
are building on traditions that have been developed over 10,000 years of their
own settlement and technology patterns. They would be wise to be reticent to
adopt a new building technology that is not proven, culturally appropriate, or
technologically feasible. I think back on several projects I have worked on
where sophisticated technology-based systems like water filtration systems,
have been donated to worthy charities in third world countries. At first, wow!
How they changed things for the better! New school uniforms were purchased from
the proceeds from the sales of purified water, and a bustling business was
born. But, then, a tiny plastic part broke. Suddenly, that awesome system
turned into an expensive piece of wall art because the people who were gifted
the technology did not have the knowledge, parts, access to alternatives, or
technical know-how to repair it.
Another great example to technological appropriateness in
design came for me on a project I worked on in Peru. A non-profit organization
wanted to build a 20,000 square foot multi-level concrete building and
ceremonial space in a jungle that is only accessible by a 2 hour powered canoe
ride. I kept asking, “How are you planning on building that?” knowing that
cranes and a pump truck would be required. Someone would justify how it could
happen using experimental technology that was not available in Peru. We could
always have tried - spending huge amounts of money and effort to buy and ship
the systems there and experiment with making it work. Finally I quit the
project because I realized that my approach to design was too “traditional” and
it would be an uphill battle to go simple within the context of these very big
dreams. I stayed in touch, however, because I love the organization’s work. A
year or so ago, I received a newsletter that announced they had finally built
their facility in the jungle. When it came down to it, they built a 1,500
square foot building out of local materials and that was built by locals.
However, it took them 2 years to break away from the big idea and back to
something that truly worked for its place. The best news of all (for me) was that
humble little building supported local crafts, culture, economies, and because
of all that – it was both affordable and easily maintainable. That was good
design. And it was sustainable.
Climate is another important criteria for why there can be
no Global Model of architecture. There are different climates around the world
and different microclimates within those climates. While ideas that work
in Iran may a great place to start for ideas what might work in New Mexico,
because they share similar climates, the wind directions, snowfall and rain amounts, soil types, and geography play important roles in differentiating how
the designs perform. We can see this illustrated quite easily. In New Mexico,
where many presume we are “all in the same climate”, there are actually 6
diverse bioregions that have different water, climate, agricultural, soil, and architectural
properties. The architectural systems especially cannot be made to “fit” in all
these regions. In the flat and hot desert, our traditional adobe homes with flat roofs placed directly on the
ground are ideal. But in the mountainous regions, they utilize small
easy-to-heat log buildings on sturdy foundations that elevate
the homes out of the snow in winter. To ignore the sun or landscape is to risk overheating and/or water
infiltration.
Few Earthships seem to place an emphasis on site selection for anything other than solar access
and views. In one example of how this can go wrong,
several Earthships were built at the Rural Earthship Alternative Community
Habitat (REACH) near the Taos Ski Valley. The REACH community, despite the assertion
otherwise in Garbage Warrior, is not
entirely a success. Some of the Earthships at REACH are only used by the
interns at Earthship Biotecture or as rentals during summer. Most often, the
people staying there have no idea there are issues with these buildings because
they are so happy to be part of the movement and living in the beautiful spaces
with the stunning views in the summertime when the site is accessible. They most
often do not recognize that those buildings are available to them for a reason –
the spaces do not work for homebuyers. Homes in this prestigious area can sell
for $300,000 or more – an expensive dorm room indeed! But the builders did not
follow some basic but necessary design principles and thus, the buildings were
difficult to sell. Not everyone wants to climb stairs in the dark to get into
bed, to be colder than comfortable in winter, overheated in summer, or to go
down a dark set of stairs into their closet. Or to listen to your neighbor’s
conversations because the site acts like a natural amphitheater and the houses
are placed too close together. Or have to abandon their essential veggie
growing planters because their cat will not stop using them as
a litterbox. Or to use the wench on their 4WD to drag themselves up an
impassable snowboarding-worthy hill in the winter. REACH is an experimental
dream that did not end up manifesting so well. Once it was removed from the
Taos Plateau to a hillside just a few miles away from the original Greater
World development, the weaknesses in the one-size-fits-all approach of the Earthship
concept began to be revealed. Some of the issues were due to limited design
understanding and poorly designed building details by novice builders, and some
were due to the unique mountain climate and landscape that the design was not modified to respond
to.
This is just one close example of how even small
microclimatic variations can undermine the performance of a building. With
every mile traveled away from Greater World, these issues become more
challenging and more important to resolve. Once we get into the hot/humid
regions, the idea implodes, and not just for Earthships. Buildings that work
well in the high arid desert do not work well near the equator. Earthship
Biotecture will go into areas hit by natural disasters to help them out by
quickly building micro Earthships to try and assist in the rebuilding efforts.
That is an awesome thing to do. The people in those areas need help now and they
can assist, as well as attempt to work the Global aspect of their design out by
modifying it for tropical climates. The only issue is that observers and users
of these facilities report that the tropical models have issues, including lack
of humidity control, lack of ventilation, poor lighting, wind channeling, mold, darkness, and worst of all…
acting as a reservoir to capture hurricane water while shedding hurricane
winds.
We need to utilize architectural tools here in New Mexico
that you may not need where you are. In his article “Earthship Hype and
Earthship Reality” on GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, building expert Martin Holladay
points out that while a cistern may be required in New Mexico where we
struggle to have enough water, a place like New England may not need the
cistern because of the natural wetness of the climate and the predominance of springs and wells. Issues
like this are why we need to pay attention to climate and not blindly follow
the standard design when that standard does not work FOR us.
There are specific issues in the design of the Global Model
Earthships. There are Code-compliance issues of not having a means of
egress from every bedroom without passing through a secondary space. The new
earth vents can render the berm dysfunctional and are, in some locations,
wrought with snow, mold, and maintenance issues. The cisterns diminish the earth-sheltering benefits of the berm. Hidden hallways and an
uninhabitable greenhouse account for an average of 50% of the space
being unusable. Openings in the south wall in the living room render the
greenhouse part of the space and thus create humidity and overheating issues
which can rot furniture. This causes a demand for additional ventilation. The over-sizing of rooms and
under-sizing of functional spaces, and the inclusion of the mechanical room and all of its noise and heat as part of
the main body of the house are yet more design challenges faced by Earthship
dwellers. We can do better.
The overwhelming evidence does not support a global model
of design… and it is not a bias towards Earthships … neither Earthships nor any
other building type works for everybody in every place. Evidently, Earthship
Europe agrees, based on this quote from their website,
“…concerning
the Global Model (one model for everywhere) I can only say:
‘Would you built an igloo in the desert?’”
Earthship Europe has modified the designs extensively to
make them work for European climates, and their spinoff Flagship Europe has
walked away from the Earthship concept entirely. That is one way that we can
know if Earthships or any other new build type works in an area. We can ask how
many more got built after the first one. And, if they changed things, what got
changed? In many cases, Earthships are modified heavily so they perform
adequately, often at great expense and over a long period of time. That fact is
not advertised, or for that matter… even acknowledged.
The most important factor we can suggest for those who
really love this idea and want to make it work is to study everything you can
about the vernacular architecture in the place you want to live.
Visit every historic or archaeological site you can. Learn from these buildings and their
relationship to their place, and adapt the design of your home to fit the
area’s climate and existing building traditions. Then, think
small. Design only what is needed for space, and then plan ahead for additions
to make them easy. The Earthship firms will not guarantee that anything they
design for you will be permitable, so you might as well tweak the design and
make it work for you.
