I forgot to add this from Nicaragua...thought some people might find it interesting from a design perspective?
The building in the pictures is called an 'Earthship'. It's built from recycled materials like old tyres packed with earth and held together by Adobe, with recycled plastic bottles to let light in (and decorate!)
It's apparently quick to build (16 days - albeit with a fairly large team) and looks pretty impressive. Renewable sources of energy are used where possible and the houses are planned to minimise energy usage.
Interesting project and ideas. I have some questions over the degree to which the communities where these houses are built will continue using the construction principles. They've been using plain old Adobe for thousands of years with pretty consistent success. Collecting thousands of tyres and packing them with earth may lose it's appeal once the western volunteers have gone home.
2 comments:
THe idea of filling tyres with soil and packing adobe around it was on 'Grand Designs' the other week. Some English bod in France had the brilliant wheeze of getting other English people daft enough to pay to go on holidy there to do the building. He also used empty bottle for windows, so He's obviously got friends in Costa Rica!
LU Moumi XXXXXXXXX
Yeah...there was a ´tyre packing competition´ held at the Earthship to get testosterone-fuelled, competitive males to do the building work. Too easy!
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