Garbage warrior MICHAEL REYNOLDS, New Mexico-based designer of shelters of the future
You qualified as a conventional architect. Where did it all go wrong?The moment I got started. I realised: this is not what we need for this planet. Architects shouldn't be making art pieces that cost $65 million to build and $18,000 a month to heat and cool. We need to respond to physics and biology and guide people into the shelters of the future.
In 1970, you moved to the desert. Were you a hippy?New Mexico is where a lot of the hippy communes were. But I never lived in a commune. But they did leave the cities. They did go to the mountains. They froze and got beat up, because they didn't know how to live there. But they did make that statement: that life in the cities needed to change. And 40 years later, I can tell you that the hell, yes, they were right.
Tell us about the first beer-can houses you built.People were cutting timber to make houses. I thought: why not use the old steel beer and soda cans that litter our streets and highways? We want to get rid of them. We don't want to get rid of trees. I built the first beer can house in 1971. It's been sold many times and it's still standing.
Not all of your experiments were as successful though, were they? My designs were experimental and I often encountered issues, but no more than you would with a conventional design. The real problem was that I was doing things differently. I was building out of garbage and running sewage through the living room. The architectural board thought I was a disgrace.
You had sewage running through the living room?God, people can be so finicky about things like that. It doesn't sound good, does it? But northern New Mexico is where the atomic bomb was tested. The army blew tens of thousands of acres to smithereens in the interest of national security. Well, saving our planet is a global security issue. So what I fought to create there was a test site where I was allowed to build houses that made mistakes with water, with sewage, with structure.
Your Earthships are designed to be self-sufficient in terms of energy, water and sewage treatment. Explain how you deal with water, first of all.Rather than shedding water, the roof collects it. That water runs through filters into a pressure tank so that you have normal household pressure. Your shower water goes through a botanic cell that you reconnect to flush the toilet. So you're cutting your sewage in half right there, because you're flushing the toilet with used water.
What happens the sewage?We split the sewage into grey and black water and we run it through botanical cells underground into the greenhouse, where it grows banana trees and grapes and flowers and butterflies. The biological processes of this planet involve sewage. We should get real about that, instead of flushing it into our rivers and bays. I'm saying it's time to face your own shit, figuratively and literally.
What about energy?Where do I get the power to run my television, microwave and laptop? When you minimise the amount of electricity a home uses, it's very economical to get what you need from the sun and wind. Our homes heat and cool themselves and use LED lighting. A two-bedroom earthship can generate enough energy to run a flatscreen TV, high-speed internet – all the amenities of a typical home.
Solar power is all very well in New Mexico, but how is it supposed to power a home in Ireland, where the heating requirements would be much higher?In New Mexico, we are at a shortage for rain. In Ireland, you've got plenty of rain but not as much sun. So you tweak the design. In New Mexico we can totally eliminate the energy for heating. In Ireland, we can probably reduce it by 85 per cent. Either way, that's a winning situation.
When are you going to change the name?Earthship sounds like the name of a bad 1970s prog-rock band. I like the name. It's getting to be pretty well known around the world. You could call it crap for all I care. The important thing is, it works.
There will be a screening of Garbage Warrior at the Sugar Club in Dublin on May 9th. Michael Reynolds will lecture there on May 19th. See earthship.com/ireland
