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Q & A: Michael Reynolds Earthship Architect |
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Contributed by Mike Kitts
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 Mike Reynolds
What are your hopes for the future of Earthships?
It
started off as individual homes, now we have two or three communities
going. I hope to see in my lifetime to see towns and cities built this
way. If you're a huge developer and you want to build a small town you
have to put in millions of dollars of infrastructure before you begin.
I
could start building a city tomorrow. I could just take a pick-up
truck, a hammer, a shovel and a tire and start building a house that
takes care of itself that would be the first house of a city. The city
use of this is where I'm hoping it will go, and I think it will.
What do you think makes a
good architect, vision or risk?
A good architect, would not be an architect, a good architect would be
a "biotect." I don't think architecture has got the ability to face the
future because of its own narcissism.
 Vision and risk are two key factors. Yes, you have to have vision, but
it's a tremendous amount of risk to be able to attempt to do things
like running sewage through a living room and building with garbage. To
take any sharp turn away from the norm in the future is definitely
going to take vision and risk. And they are not possible in today's
architecture.
Are there other
possibilities of other people using 'unexpected' materials in different
ways?
I think with the Earthship concept we have just scratched the surface
of what is possible in terms of using the materials that are discarded
by modern society. There are many things out there and once people
start seeing that as a resource, looking at municipal dumps as a
resource, the human mind is going to go crazy with it. I think the
potential of it is off the wall.
What other countries have
Earthships?
We've got them all over the world. There's one at 14,000ft up in
Bolivia, Japan, all over Europe, India, Mexico, Canada, Chile, they're
everywhere. It's like planting seeds. Whenever there is one of these
types of buildings it causes people to raise their eyebrows, to think,
to see that there are other options. And in some ways that is the major
task right there, just to wake people up.
Tell us about the
different materials you use to make the Earthships?
The different materials we use from the landfills are tires, cardboard,
bottles, plastics and glass, aluminum and steel cans, and today we've
started using the panels from thrown away refrigerators, cooking ranges
and washing machines.
So there is a list of many products that we have right now and there
are more coming all the time. In addition to the discarded materials we
use all natural materials including natural, wood, rock, and mud
plaster. So it's either natural or reclaimed materials. Very few
materials are manufactured, but there are some like glass and
insulation, but we have greatly reduced the amount of these by using
secondary use materials largely combining them with natural materials.
 How does someone go about
making an Earthship?
In terms of making it so other people can make Earthships, we write a
lot of books, make DVD's and CDs and hold lectures and seminars, plus
we're setting up education facilities all over the world. So it's an
education process at the moment to educate other home builders,
architects and designers who can then educate more people on what we
have found and use these ideas. We're trying to make it easy.
We have built Earthships in every climate there is. Some people think
because they're here in the southwest U.S. they can only be built here,
but there are in all sorts of extreme environments. They can be built
anywhere because they encounter the local elements and phenomenon and
are tuned to that climate.
Because Earthships are made to local conditions and give people what
they need for survival, we were asked to go to the Andaman Islands
after the Tsunami hit and use their garbage to rebuild buildings that
provide water and shelter, which we did. And after the hurricanes on
the coasts, we were asked to build homes that wouldn't blow away and
again provide water and shelter.
Shelter and water are the main things that are asked for after a
natural disaster. Even if your home didn't blow away you still can't
use it if there is no water. So with Earthship homes, water comes with
them. If water is falling from the sky, and it is on the majority of
the plant, it's crazy not to catch it.
Do Earthships foster a
sense of community?
Yes, there's definitely an Earthships community aspect born out of many
people in one place doing something similar. We don't have an
organization or an organized community effort, it is simply a result of
people in this community being like-minded, so the community of it
grows from the logic of it.
 Do ever take time to
reflect on what has happened?
Yes. I often spend time thinking on what's happened, what's happening
and what's going to happen. A good way for me to do that is to go into
the mountains and run, deprive myself of oxygen and see what comes out
of doing that. I came out here originally to race motorcycles and to
get injured so I wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.
Riding a motorcycle turned out to be a way of escape from everything,
because when you're racing a motorcycle through bumps and rocks and
drop-offs, you don't think of anything else except the three feet of
terrain in front of you. That in itself was a way to turn everything
else off and see what else was out there.
Is there an ethos you
live by?
Regarding Earthships the one thing that defines it all is logic. We are
simply responding logically to the world around us. The problem that
exists in this part of the world, indeed in all parts of the world, is
that logic is inhibited by rules, regulations, laws, religion, politics
and money. We are just saying "whatever logic says, we are just doing
it."
Logic is unarguable. When you go outside and it's 106 degrees in the
sun, logically you're going to go in the shade. The simplest example of
that is a dog. It lays in the shade in the summer time and lies in the
sun in the wintertime. That's all there is to it.
What would you be doing
if you weren't doing this?
I can't even imagine. People go to a spa for physical conditioning ,
people go to church for spiritual well-being, people go fishing or
watch TV to relax and do whatever they do as a profession to make
money. All of those things are the same to me. Making these buildings
puts them all into one for me. That gets to be like a laser beam, which
is a better use of time that spending it in a number of directions.
Is this your calling in
life?
Oh yes, definitely. There's no question in my mind. I'm having fun, I'm
making my existence, it's my hobby, my work and my religion. Do you
feel isolated doing this? If I'm isolated it on purpose so that I can
take a step back and look at what else is going on, but then I dive
right back into it, going all over the world working with all kinds of
people. Isolation is diminished when people get more and more
desperate. Desperation is like an arrow that penetrates dogma and what
we're doing is on the tip of that arrow.
Visit:
earthship.org
cnn.com |
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