Over the last year I have had the opportunity to help
two women who are building houses in our community design their dream homes. I
had offered myself as a designer/consultant to assist them in coming up with
designs that are based on concepts of sustainable architecture and embrace
their particular needs and esthetics. While being creatively satisfying, the
process of doing this has also been an education in non-attachment to realizing
any particular outcome.
The first project was rather collaborative in nature.
This woman had a basic floor plan in mind when she came to me, but
had many questions about specific aspects of the design, related to appropriate
materials, window and vent placement, structural design and integrity, etc.
Over a period of several weeks, I periodically met with her to discuss
the various options, and the design began to take more concrete shape. We settled
on a passive solar design, with the wall structure to be primarily earthbags
filled with crushed volcanic rock and then plastered with papercrete, similar
to my house. But instead of the dome arrangement that I used for my house, she
wanted a more traditional wood framed roof structure.
I came up with an off-set peak roof design that provided
a substantial bank of clerestory windows to light and help heat the northern
aspect of the interior, as well as to provide ample ventilation for the greenhouse
area that would be on the south side. Large natural poles would support this
central ridge, and then rafters would angle down on either side to rest on the
earthbag perimeter wall. The southern aspect of the house would be rectangular,
but the northern side would be semi-circular and would be substantially bermed
with soil.
Once we settled on this design and it was approved by
our local architectural committee (we live in a covnented community), she could
proceed with the work of actually building her house. She hired laborers
as needed, and Providence provided her with an experienced earthbag builder:
Juli Jones, who with her husband Jacob, had built a small earthbag cabin
in Spain (featured in Green Home Building E-zine #8 and can be seen here: http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/earthbag.htm#cabin ).
I
would occasionally stop by the building site to offer moral support or advice,
but mostly the work proceeded without much input from me. I had given her a
detailed listing of all the important steps to realize her design, as well as
a set of detailed, scaled drawings. The walls were up to about three feet when
Rosana and I left for a two-month vacation travelling in Mexico. I would get
sporadic emails from her as we travelled, suggesting that the design was being
modified in various ways, as she received advice from various people that she
was working with. When I returned from the trip, I was surprised to see that
the clerestory windows were completely eliminated, the glazing arrangement for
the greenhouse was substantially altered, and various, less dramatic, changes
or omissions had been made.So I have learned that, at least in this instance, the
evolution from design to actual building can become a rather collaborative affair.
While she liked her original design, she was not emphatic that it be implemented
precisely, so as the building proceeded, other peoples ideas would sometimes
prevail. I'm sure that she will ultimately be happily living in her house, but
it will probably not perform in quite the way that I had envisioned. I built
my house almost entirely by myself, and I made many changes from the original
plan as I did so, but ultimately the collaboration was just between Rosana and
myself. When more people get involved in the collaborative process, the final
building is likely to be less cohesive.
The second design project with Alice was more
challenging and somewhat more creative, in that she really had the bare minimum
of an idea of what she wanted. She gave me a simple sketch that showed an oval
shape, with some written functions roughly scattered within it. I went to the
building site with her, and we walked around, feeling the space and talking
about where a little house might best fit into the landscape. We focused on a
nice south-facing slope that would protect her from the prevailing
winds.
I met with the second woman several times to talk about
various ways to incorporate what she wanted into a design, and she was generally
enthusiastic about the ideas that I presented to her. As a concept began to
coalesce, she was approving, and her main suggestions had to with specific windows
that she had and wanted to incorporate.
I used this opportunity to come up with a design that
I felt would be especially well-suited to her land, and would rank quite high
regarding 
sustainable
architecture. It would be an oval shape, with the walls being vertical and made
of two side-by-side stacks of earthbags. The outer layer of bags would be filled
with the crushed volcanic rock for insulation, and the inner layer would be
filled with the soil from the site to serve as thermal mass. The most experimental
part of the design was the roof, which would be both tensile and compression,
with poles radiating out from a central steel hoop that would be supported by
a branching tree. A large openable circular dome skylight would be attached
to the steel ring. Then the radiating poles would help support an insulated
earthbag/papercrete roof. In our rather dry climate, such a roof structure should
work fine, since it is really quite similar to what I have been living in for
for several years.
sustainable
architecture. It would be an oval shape, with the walls being vertical and made
of two side-by-side stacks of earthbags. The outer layer of bags would be filled
with the crushed volcanic rock for insulation, and the inner layer would be
filled with the soil from the site to serve as thermal mass. The most experimental
part of the design was the roof, which would be both tensile and compression,
with poles radiating out from a central steel hoop that would be supported by
a branching tree. A large openable circular dome skylight would be attached
to the steel ring. Then the radiating poles would help support an insulated
earthbag/papercrete roof. In our rather dry climate, such a roof structure should
work fine, since it is really quite similar to what I have been living in for
for several years.I handed over a complete set of scaled and detailed plans
for this house to her just before we left for the Mexican trip. While we were
gone she showed the plans to some other people who had some building experience,
but not with earthbags, who advised her that what I designed was too radically
experimental and possibly unsafe. She began to have second thoughts about the
design, and ultimately decided to have someone else draw up crude plans for
a very conventional rectangular straw bale building. This new design will not
fit nearly so nicely into the landscape of her site, cost considerably more
to build (since it will need a conventional foundation and roof structure),
and not be so environmentally benign as the original design. What puzzles me
about this is why she asked me to design her house in the first place, knowing
what my interests and experience were.
It happens that these two project were for local people,
but I have done other design or consulting work for people at a distance, using
the internet, phone, fax, and mail. I enjoy this sort of work, since I like
the challenge of conceptualizing something that fits a given set of needs,
and to do so in an aesthetically pleasing manner.