Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Garbage Warrior

Here is his home page

I DVR-ed this program back a couple of weeks ago. Wow. Talk about inspirational. This guy, this renegade architect Michael Reynolds, is so pure--so idealistic. He is in there packing mud into tires and presenting legislation to Congress. I am so proud of him. I want to be this cool. I want to do something this worthwhile. I wondered when I read the title on the cable menu--is he fighting garbage? That would be cool. Taking up arms against those massive island of trash in the ocean?? Nope--I was wrong. He uses beer cans, car tires and water bottles to form bricks. I am still flabbergasted at the almost reverse thinking where the mud/mortar is more important to a structure's integrity than the bricks. These half bottles are pushed together--butt to butt to become tools of choice for producing thermal mass and energy. This once de-barred (Arianna is that the right term? They took away his license) and his uber crunchy disciples have devoted themselves entirely to advancing their art. They call the structures "Earthships" and the technique is "Biotecture". I wish the 'burbs surrounding my land were self-sufficient, off-the-grid communities "where design and function converge in eco-harmony". Instead I'll just keep on doing my small bit.Like supporting Earthday

I hate how the call themselves "villages" and "estates" BULLSHIT. Villages have commons and grocery stores. Estates have sales and mournful offspring.

1 comment:

Lilim said...

Huh, what a coincidence! I spent a few hours, on Saturday, researching various Green stuff, and read through most of his site. There are some great examples of Earthships on YouTube. I really, really, really want to build one! It's on my list of "stuff to work on within the next few years." I'm so very tempted to do an internship, through his organization. Basically, you save up for months and blow all of your money on food, housing, and transportation, in order to spend a few weeks working on part of an Earthship in New Mexico. It sounds financially ricockulous, but what an experience! ^-^