28 June 2010

Rebel Architect Fights to Build “Carbon-Zero Homes”

Michael Reynolds uses garbage, sun, wind, rain, snow; help after disasters

Innovative architect and Biotecture founder Michael Reynolds, whose buildings utilize recycled materials.

By Amanda Spake
Special Correspondent

Washington — Michael Reynolds — rebel, environmentalist, visionary — has spent the last 40 years challenging the architectural establishment and local zoning codes to build “off-grid” houses that require little or no energy to construct and produce no greenhouse gases. Reynolds calls them “Earthships.” They are self-sustaining structures that make maximum use of renewable resources — sun, wind, rain, and snow — for heat, cooling, light, collecting and pumping water, treating sewage, even growing food in indoor greenhouses. Thanks to partnerships with individuals and with municipal and national governments, about 2,000 Earthships are in use around the world today.

Reynolds describes his Earthships as “carbon-zero homes,” largely built from natural and recycled materials found at local landfills — automobile tires, beer and soda cans, plastic and glass bottles, even panels from discarded refrigerators and washing machines. “Between 30 and 50 percent of the CO₂ emissions are directly related to and coming from buildings,” says Reynolds. “Green development, carbon-zero development, must be fast-tracked if we are to keep up with global climate change.”

The son of a homemaker and a milkman, Reynolds grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati. He moved to northern New Mexico shortly after graduating in 1969. Reacting to news reports about both the energy crisis and the nation’s overflowing landfills, he built his first house made of recycled beer cans in Taos, New Mexico, in 1971.

Soon, he was experimenting with tires, cans and bottles packed with earth for insulation, stacked into walls, plastered with cement or adobe mud. His houses were powered by the wind and sun. He coined a new term: “Biotecture — the profession of designing buildings and environments with consideration for their sustainability — a combination of biology and architecture.”

 

After the 2004 tsunami, Reynolds and his team built this demonstration home in the Andaman Islands.

After the 2004 tsunami, Reynolds and his team built this demonstration home in the Andaman Islands.

When he tried to build two Earthship communities outside Taos, Reynolds ran afoul of building codes and lost his state and national architectural licenses (he has since gotten them back). “The codes were not made for what we are doing,” he says. Local codes required that new housing be connected to centralized utilities — none could be off-grid. It took seven years of bureaucratic wrangling to get the Earthships legally approved.

Reynolds recognized the need for a housing test site, where he could try out designs unencumbered by building codes. “Garbage Warrior,” a documentary by British filmmaker Oliver Hodge, chronicles Reynolds’ nearly four-year struggle on behalf of the Sustainable Development Testing Site Act, which became law in New Mexico in 2007.

Reynolds’ iconoclastic ideas have been welcomed abroad, particularly in the developing world. After the 2004 tsunami destroyed housing and water supplies throughout Southeast Asia, Reynolds was invited to India’s Andaman Islands to build a demonstration self-sustaining house out of debris from the storm. Earthships collect and filter rain water. “The island people still get water from that one-room house,” he says.

In May, Reynolds and crew traveled to Haiti to seek Haitian government approval to build four blocks of “permanent ‘organic rubble housing,’” says Reynolds. Haitian crews will be incorporated once construction begins, so local workers can learn the building techniques and continue after Reynolds and his crew leave.

Even without a disaster, some local governments see the wisdom in Reynolds’ ways. The town of Las Cabos, Mexico, at the tip of Baja is being buried in garbage, and also suffers from a housing shortage. “The municipal government wants us to build low-income housing from the waste at the dump. The site is beautiful waterfront land, and they have the funds.” Mexico’s less restrictive building codes make this project easier, cheaper and faster to build.

Reynolds wants to see developed countries set aside some of their own restrictive codes to encourage “red carpet carbon-zero development.” He admits the idea is controversial, “but the risks of pursuing green development are not nearly as severe as not developing it at all.”

Amanda Spake is a Washington, D.C.-based writer whose articles on health, science, education and the environment have appeared in U.S. News and World Report, The Nation, and the Washington Post, among other publications.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)