Taos rests smoothly on a huge mesa in the southwestern state of New Mexico, so it's about 2.1 kilometers closer to the sky. Mesa, or Mesa in English, is a flat-topped hill or hill that is wide and flat with steep rock walls at the edges. The people who live there are often seen by outsiders as the immortal wind and bones, but the people who live on it feel that this is my plain, it is just a little high, a little beautiful and unconscious, or a natural calm.
Now, there is a new demographic in Taos Terraces, not just hippies, but also cash-strapped people who can't own a home in American towns, or people who have money to spare but believe in eschatology, and people who see off-the-grid living as the ideal mode of life and want to be self-sufficient. They meet on Highway 64, just northwest of Taos, and together they build Earthship.
The home of a Taos home improvement pioneer
Before boarding the new Taos inhabitant's ship of the Earth, we might as well visit the Nicolai Fechin House in Taos, now part of the Taos Art Museum. Who is Nikolai Fechin? Someone once asked the Russian painter Repin who was the most talented painter of his time, and the master heartily said: "Fitchin! He was talking about Nikolai Fechin.
After buying the house in 1928, Fitchin spent several years enlarging and remodeling the two-story adobe structure and re-"carving" the house using typical Russian design elements such as "triple windows and finely carved doors." In this modest-looking room, there is the same Knabe piano that Tchaikovsky played at Carnegie Hall, the windows of an Orthodox church, and the Siberian lamp. Just as he is adept at creating rich textures on the canvas with a spatula, he also uses adzes to create undulating waves on the wood, so that as soon as guests enter the door, they are hugged by carpentry with a deep Russian flavor. He was the first to bring electricity, refrigerators, and flush toilets into Taos.
Fechin House Photography Edamame
Fechin's contribution to Taos seems to be more of a craft than painting. Those who wish to build a ship on Earth should perhaps pay a visit to the home of this Taos home improvement pioneer.
Architects waiting for the full moon to "burn through the brain".
About 20 minutes from the Fechin House, on the right hand side of Highway 64, is a wilderness of more than 2.6 square kilometers, and a soft female voice in the navigation guides you: "Turn right on Earthship Road." "In fact, you don't need to navigate, there are small warships about to sink in the wilderness, which gives the land in front of you the image of a lake, and some heads are shaking, like sailors on battleships, who are building new ships of the earth.
New Mexico's Big World Earthship Community Photo by Edamame
The front of the "battleships" was often covered with glass and surrounded by yards made of cans and bottles, so that, at an angle, the sun would make them shine, adding a kind of divine filter to these rustic buildings. The sun is extremely scorching, in the words of the Wyoming writer Erap in the movie "Asteroid City": "The sun in the highlands and deserts is neither warm nor cool, but it is always clean and unforgiving." ”
"Earth Boat" by architect Reynolds Photograph Edamame
At the entrance, there is a sun-shaped sign made of tin that reads: "The Greater World Earthship Community Residents Only." It all started with a somewhat crazy architect, Mike Reynolds, a passionate practitioner of sustainable living who loves Bob Dylan, is stubborn, and often waits for the full moon to "burn through his brain". He wanted all people to have water, food, and a safe haven from the storm, and the Big World was exactly what he envisioned.
If there is a similarity between Reynolds and Fitchin, it is that both of them cannot do without carpenter's tools like adzes and axes. If Reynolds plans to camp overnight, his gear is a sleeping bag and a fully functional, adjustable axe that cuts logs in the backyard.
The Kentuckian has been a controversial figure since his student days. His dissertation was extremely annoying to half of his classmates and faculty because it suggested that owners/residents build their own house-within-a-house inside concrete buildings so that ordinary people could set foot on "architect-owned mecca"; The other half of the class praised it, and the paper was eventually published in the journal Architectural Record. This event set the tone for Reynolds' life: condemnation and praise followed.
In 1970, Reynolds began experimenting with beer cans to build houses. The inspiration came from a news report by Walter Cronkite, a well-known supporter of the show, about cans being thrown around the countryside and about the cutting of wood in the Northwest to build housing, predicting that the environmental damage caused by felling and the soaring price of lumber would make future homes super expensive.
In 1970, Reynolds began experimenting with beer cans to build houses. Photo by Edamame
In 1971, Reynolds, a graduate of architecture at the University of Cincinnati, bought an old 18,000-square-meter barn in an apple orchard outside Taos. It was there that he began to try to transform whatever scrap he could find into what he needed. He added bottles, jars, and tires to the barn, he installed a bathroom and a fireplace out of an old boiler, made lamps out of canned tuna, made his son's bed out of a wooden Coke box, and made a doorknob out of a flaxseed oil can. This house is the prototype of the ship of Earth.
The first official Earth ship built by Reynolds in 1979 and where the Reynolds lived for more than two decades can now be found on Airbnb. It has been renovated into a B&B with a daily rent of around $170, and it is known as the "Hobbit House". Most guests will be happy with such a unique stay, but one guest has a pertinent comment: "This hobbit home has an incredibly green bathroom, perfect for a one-night stay – if you stay longer than one night, put up with the strong smell of manure outside." ”
Self-sufficient artwork
Route 64 turns right at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, and on the right side of the road, Reynolds's "One Leaf Boat" more than 50 years ago has long since been transformed into a "fleet" called "Earth Ships", which now has more than 70 Earth Ships, half of which are planned to be forever green spaces. At first glance, the buildings resemble a hippie version of the work of Spanish architect Gaudí, but were hastily completed on a budget.
I first came across the term ship of earth from a road movie called Nomadland. In the film, Linda gives everyone an initiation lesson about the Earth Ship: "It's a completely detached house, made of tires, bottles and cans. It will in no way harm the land...... It's self-sufficient and looks like a living work of art that you built with your hands. This is something we can leave to our children and grandchildren, and this house will be passed down from generation to generation and outlive all of us......"
A wall made with tires, bottles, and cans Photo edamame
Visitors are not allowed to enter the community, which is private territory, but they have built a visitor center for curious tourists to visit. I was received by a girl named Christie from Texas. She's the quintessential Southern blonde girl-next-door who comes to the four-week Earthship training program with her dog. The training schedule is simple, with classes in the morning to learn theoretical knowledge, and in the afternoon to build houses and conduct field exercises.
Reynolds started a company called "Earthship Biotecture" for the construction and training of sustainable homes, and "Earthship" is a trademark owned and marketed by the company. Through the information provided by the center, I learned about the six principles that the ship of the earth needs to have: 1. warm in winter and cool in summer, 2. provide energy with solar and wind power, 3) have its own sewage treatment system, 4) use natural and recyclable raw materials, 5) collect natural water and establish a water filtration and purification system; 6. Grow fruits and vegetables and raise animals to provide a food source.
The collected rainwater is used four times
The house of the ship of the earth is U-shaped, and perhaps this is where its name comes from, like a ship. The house is a double-storey house, the inner floor is the living space, like a thermos bottle, and the outer floor is a greenhouse greenhouse, planted with flowers and plants to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer. The houses are mostly south-facing, and the sunlight can melt the snow.
Greenhouse inside the ship of the Earth Photo by Edamame
The visitor center is a model home, from indoor plumbing to electrical installations, as well as self-sufficient food production and enclosed septic tank management. Toilets, hallways, gardens, everywhere you walk are plastered with brightly colored paper, explaining to you how unusual these spaces you are accustomed to in the house are in the ship of Earth.
In the restroom, there was a yellow note reminding me that the toilet was flushed with 1.6 gallons of water. The rinse water has already been used twice: the first time in the sink or shower, and the second time in a pot for watering vegetables. The water is used here to the point of being so precious that in fact, it is used four times: it is collected from rainwater, treated for showering, dishwashing, laundry, etc., the second time it is treated with a compost filter layer stacked in the greenhouse pots, then watered the plants, then goes to the flush toilet, and after the third use, the water from the flush toilet is used to irrigate the landscape flowers and plants in the outdoor garden.
Each "ship" is equipped with a 1,700-gallon water tank, and the building is flanked by two cisterns, which are buried to prevent the tanks from degrading and maintain ideal water quality. Rainwater flows down the drainage holes into the reservoirs buried in the soil, where they are connected by pipes and the various water uses of the Earth Ship.
The internal non-load-bearing walls of the ship of the earth were built with aluminum cans and adobe. Aluminum cans are a "natural" resource, and this recycled resource reduces the amount of raw materials used in construction. To use, simply twist the cans a little and they will snap onto the adobe, and then place about 5 cm of adobe around each aluminum can, which will form a structurally solid matrix when it dries. Three of its four facades are built with dirt-compacted scrap car tires filled with compacted mud that absorb heat during the day and release it at night, thus regulating the temperature of the ship of the earth. The south façade is all-glass, which absorbs as much sunlight as possible for heating in the winter and shades it with blinds in the summer, which is the secret of the ship to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature day and night, winter and summer.
Earthship's communications use satellite dishes, and each Earthship has eight deep-cycle batteries and eight solar panels to provide 1.5 kilowatts of electricity.
Christie didn't forget to remind me, "Oh, it's our founder Mike's birthday." ”
7 years of struggle
It was August 9, 2023, the 78th birthday of Mike Reynolds, a non-mainstream architect who was dubbed the "Garbage Guard". As a young man, perhaps the craziest thing in his life was to get injured on a motorcycle to escape service in the Vietnam War, and then he abandoned his motorcycle to build an escape ark for a world that was about to be overwhelmed by a sea of garbage created by humanity itself, like Noah in New Mexico.
Reynolds as a young man photographed edamame
In 1994, he acquired 2.6 square kilometers of land in New Mexico and sold it to the community for no profit, and it was said that the down payment was as cheap as a meal at a good restaurant. The community was built to be self-sufficient, with no external power lines, no municipal sewerage, no utilities, no mortgages, and they built their homes with the building solutions provided by Reynolds.
Ironically, once the project began, Reynolds had his architect's license revoked and his subdivision of land illegal. Because these experimental buildings have no standards and plans, they are completely illegal. Reynolds was also often complained by customers that one moment the roof was leaking, the bathroom smelled bad, sometimes it was too cold, sometimes it was too hot, and when it got hot, one resident found that the plastic shell of his typewriter had melted in the ship of Earth.
Reynolds spent seven years trying to get the government to accept his experimental community, and the project was finally given a permit to continue, provided that an engineer supervised it, and that the wild architect could not be left to his whims. During that time, Reynolds spent much of his time lobbying New Mexico to revise the regulations surrounding experimental housing, and the architect, who had to be as frantic as Einstein, frequently haunted government offices in Santa Fe.
After the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Reynolds and his seven-member team moved into the town of the victims in the Bay of Bengal, where they built makeshift huts for locals out of tires and water bottles. Despite the trouble New Mexico brought him, he raised the state flag of the New Mexico Red Cross on a yellow background on the makeshift little roof that he built in 14 days.
Reynolds' luck finally began to reverse. After the State Board of Architects heard about the good things he had done in India, he was re-invited to apply for an architect's license. In March 2007, the New Mexico Legislature passed the Sustainability Experimentgrounds Act, written by Reynolds, and his team was allowed to research and test sustainable housing on 8,000 square meters of land.
Reynolds looked up to the sky and roared: Hubbahubbahubba (beautiful slang, an interjection that expresses admiration and joy)!
Expired experimental sites
Across the street from the visitor center's parking lot, there is a two-story house, surrounded by a number of squat buildings, with an orange warning sign on the ground, which reads: Official U.S. Sustainable Survival Experiment Site, 2 acres.
This is the "experimental field" of Earthship sustainable housing that Reynolds has acquired through his tireless efforts, and its official name is "EVE" (Earthship Village Ecologies). On this two-acre (8,000-square-meter) plot, they can experiment with all kinds of buildings without being bound by building codes. The two-story building, with its metallic tin, reflects daylight and gives it a postmodern sci-fi feel, until you get closer and realize that its surface is so primitive. The walls are filled with empty bottles and cans, which are flooded with light to create a stained glass effect, and the large arched windows fill the space with natural light, giving the impression of a miniature Gaudí Sagrada Atonement. At the same time, it also undertook the experimental task of how thick the walls of a taller building should be to provide a comfortable living space all year round, if there are no parapets around them.
The surrounding low-profile towers are made up of five studios, private living quarters that share a common living space, including a kitchen and conservatory, and are planned to be a high-density Earthship community that can accommodate up to 25 residents. The design vision is to connect the Earth Boat through a public bike lane/food jungle that integrates rainwater harvesting, sewage treatment, fruit and vegetable planting, and fish and chicken farming. However, the five-year validity period of the experimental base has expired, and their experiments have come to a halt.
In the experimental base, only one fourth-generation vertical wind turbine is still in operation, as if it were an unofficial flag of the experimental village, and the wind catching device known as the "dynamic ball" is still being perfected. It is envisaged that it will capture winds from all directions, provide 1.5 kilowatts of electricity, and have a 20-year lifespan.
At the test site, only one vertical wind turbine is still in operation. Photo by Edamame
Dream soap bubbles
Those who chose to settle down on Earthship were originally hippies who tried to escape from society, but also those who longed for an off-grid life and longed for self-sufficiency, and later some middle-class people who could not afford to buy housing in the city began to join them. In recent years, with the turmoil in the world and frequent global climate change, more and more "survivalists" have emerged, and they have begun to prepare for unpredictable disasters. Silicon Valley's plutocrats are keen to turn Cold War-era underground buildings into doomsday bunkers, but this is often costly. The idea of the middle class in big cities like New York and San Francisco was that it would be better to build shelters in the New Mexico wilderness. Who would have thought that the deserts of New Mexico, once busy with nuclear weapons testing, would now become a haven for people to escape catastrophes, including nuclear apocalypse?
In fact, the cost of building an Earth ship is already not low, requiring $400,000-$500,000 to comfortably "sail" in this desert sea without worry. This is where Earthship is criticized, as it costs almost the same as a traditional house, unless you can get the recyclable materials and do all the construction work independently. After moving in, although water and electricity are free, regular maintenance also costs money. Of course, Reynolds' company promises that for $2,000 or less, they can build you a small, simple "survival dome," but you have to be prepared to think it's an expensive tent.
Earthship itself is not as natural as it claims, as more than half of its building materials are concrete, which is responsible for 10% of the world's greenhouse gases. In addition, true food self-sufficiency is difficult to achieve, and the production of fruits and vegetables in those U-shaped greenhouses is very limited.
However, the ship of the earth was not born with the vision of large-scale commercial applications, it was just an attempt by an atypical architect with a hippie heart. When it is copied commercially, the original disadvantages are magnified and the advantages are minimized. The soap bubble of the dream of self-sufficiency, waste utilization, and a slow and leisurely construction of an off-grid building for oneself, exposed to the air of mass production, capitalization, and utilitarianism, bursts without hesitation.
Yes, these ships of the earth, with all their loopholes, seem to be only really interesting in the wilderness, with Fern carrying an oil lamp in a similar way to Nomadland. Those who live inside, listen to passers-by and neighbors tell about their lives as if they were legends, and in the midst of strange and grotesque storms, they are on the boat.
Mao Bean
Editor-in-charge: Yang Jiamin