Cal Earth Creating Different Housing

ClosedLoop writes " Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of the Cal Earth Institute. I found myself in southern California's high desert listening to Iranian-born writer, award-winning-architect, and Cal Earth Institute founder Nader Khalili present his vision of affordable housing that the world's people can build for themselves. Judging from his research structures (and EcoDome), he's not far from his goal. He also works with NASA on ideas for structures that can be built from local Lunar or Martian materials. "

Comments

This can mean only one thing...

[Zorilla]

Martian teepees?

Adobe?

[Dancin_Santa]

People have been making structures for themselves for a long time. From the towering A-frame lodges of the Pacific Islands to the mud-brick adobe dwellings of the American plains, eco-friendly housing has been around for literally all time.

These designs all require some kind of special material or parts that aren't so easily available in many areas. Fortunately, the dwellings these indigenous people have been using since the beginning of their civilization will work just fine.

Re:Adobe?

[danamania]

> These designs all require some kind of special material or
> parts that aren't so easily available in many areas.

The lunar ones I find interesting, because up there it's likely there will be none of the typical materials, but plenty of technology. No wood, plant matter, not even water for mud bricks. The idea of a fused magma dome generated by focused sunlight is just too cool :)

Re:Adobe?

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"the dwellings these indigenous people have been using since the beginning of their civilization will work just fine."

Ever seen what happens to the traditional adobe house when an earthquake hits? That's why the death toll in the mid-East quakes is so high. The Cal-Earth design won't turn into dust and dump the roof onto the sleeping kids.

Re:Adobe?

[Firethorn]

Actually, I think that the really traditional Adobe houses took earthquakes more or less fine. Many of the deaths in the mideast are more due to people living in shacks built from scavanged materials, where they didn't even have the resources to create the traditional type homes.

Also, fads factor into this, as people want to build a "western" home, without doing the fancy things required to make them earthquake resistant.

Remember the town that was buried in ash from a volcano? Many of the buildings remained intact.

Re:Adobe?

[gobbo]

Ever seen what happens to the traditional adobe house when an earthquake hits?

I don't know about adobe bricks, but a similar material, cob, has curved walls and fibrous material for integrity, and generally withstand earthquakes well.

refreshing ideas

[courseB]

nice to see a look towards 'nature' with curved and organic lines. a cactus is a powerhouse due to its round shape. we could make our homes such too.

living in this straight line box is getting old.

Re:refreshing ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

a cactus is a powerhouse due to its round shape.

Right, that's why batteries are always round, because the round shape generates electricity. But wait - pyramids sharpen razorblades?

Question:

[oexeo]

> ... that the world's people can build for themselves.

So, tell me, who exactly built them before?

Martian Houses

[mordors9]

Thank god that someone is finally addressing the Martian housing crisis.

What's it like to live in?

[niemeyer]

I found the site interesting, I'm always looking for interesting, durable building techniques for the "Dream House". What I did not find was what these houses are like to live in. They looked pretty comfortable to live in for the California/desert climate, but I wonder how they hold up in rainer climates like the US southeast or even Northern plains like North Dakota, etc.

Re:It's supposed to be affordable

[Zorilla]

This is for southern California, so it starts at $12.00 for the cardboard and $950,000 for the property.

Needs to be blessed by academia

[panurge]

Remember, folks, the technology and science of indigenous peoples isn't real until it has been properly rediscovered by Westerners. In fact, indigenous peoples don't actually exist until the West discovers them and writes coffee-table books about them.

OK this is a cheap jibe, and these houses do look nice, but most cultures have rather good traditional building styles based on local materials, and they are under threat mainly from so-called architects, and the heritage industry which wants to preserve them as they were and not allow them to be adapted to modern conditions. In fact, I have just had my house refaced and new ashlars and lintel on the front door using materials dug up a few miles away, while down the road you can see modern houses being put up with inferior stuff that has probably moved several hundred miles.

This guy may actually be doing a good job, but as others have said, it's not as if he invented doing things this way.

Re:Needs to be blessed by academia

[davejenkins]

Remember, folks, the technology and science of indigenous peoples isn't real until it has been properly rediscovered by Westerners. In fact, indigenous peoples don't actually exist until the West discovers them and writes coffee-table books about them.

While I realize your attempt is to grant some legitimacy to "non-western" sciences, your original sarcasm actually holds water to some degree (IMHO). Certainly non-european cultures had their sciences and indigenous architectures, but let's not grant them "superior" status just because they are different. The wooden box house is just as legitimate design as teepees, adobe, and straw huts-- it is a lot better in many ways-- but that isn't my point.

While it is politically correct to rag on the "West", let's face facts: the "West" has outstripped every other culture technologically for centuries. This has in turn led to cultural, financial, and philosophical dominance as well. This is not a bad thing-- it is just a thing. Someone has to be in charge, and the good news is that the dominant philosophy is liberal democracy.

Back on topic: Lunar Adobe moon houses will be cool, but I imagine NASA will be opting for the designs that allow the most space for the least energy and time-to-build. I don't think they will go for cool shaps just because they are shamanistic avatars of Kaguya-hime.

Re:Needs to be blessed by academia

[J05H]

>> This guy may actually be doing a good job, but as others have said, it's not as if he invented doing things this way.

Mr Khalili is taking his native Iranian building styles and knowledge and using modern/futuristic materials in the building. His buildings are the some of the only structures that rate a "10" on California's earthquake-resistance standards. His buildings are beautiful, strong and apparently very comfortable inside. His is a very successful combination of the old and new.

the it-doesn't-exist-until-it's-discovered attitude is a leftover of the Europeans moving out of their dark ages - the attitude colors every aspect of American life. History is far more complicated than our official teachings.

josh

common misconception

[poptones]

part of the "Superadobe" construction is a proiper external shell. Plastering the house with a proper lime based mix will help make it reasonably waterproof. Replacing this as it's washed away is not something that can be neglected for decades on end, but it's not something that needs to be done every year either.

People often have the same notions about cob homes. If the walls are made from mud, then enough rain would cause them to weaken. In cob structures this is taken care of by proper foundation (ie a foot or so of rock along the ground before placing mud) a roof with good overhang, and proper plastering of outside walls. There are cob homes all over France and Germany and England that have stood hundreds of years.

With these structures the earth is contained in bags and interlocked with barb wire. You would want to make sure the house had a proper foundation for the walls, but the bags would help stabilize things much better than plain cob, which is already quite strong. I'm not sure if it's still online but I once read a report from a fellow who was demolishing one of these to make room for new construction, and it was pretty incredibly strong. He took a hose and shovel and had the entire dome standing on just three narrow "legs." It took quite a lot of deliberate undermining the foundation to cause the dome to finally collapse.

What I find really amazing is the concept of using solar energy to heat the soil to magma, then guiding its flow to form ceramic dwellings. I've read accounts of people filling these structures with wood and firing them in order to make ceramic domes, but the notion of directing magma flows is pretty... "ambitious."

Holds up in Wet weather?

[implex]

The outside of these things, and other similar structures, use a mixture of clay and sand and often organic matter building up an earthen render nearly two inches thick. Even though this withstands light infrequent rain quite well often a more resilient topcoat is added. Traditionalists lean towards a lime based render. Use of cement in the render will also give it waterproof qualities but is not considered as a natural a finish.

Re:Compromise

[cowscows]

Just to disagre, I think Geodesic domes are extremely ugly. Fascinating things they are, sure, but they do not make an attractive house.

More importantly, with a different emphisis on design, I'm guessing you could probably make these Cal-earth structures look significantly different than what that website showed. A geodesic dome has to look like a geodesic dome. Unless you completely cover it with other stuff, in which case, why bother with the dome anyways?

But still, any attempts to create more sustainable, efficient homes is good by me.

Monolithic Concrete Dome Houses

[furry_wookie]

Actually, there are some people already doing more forward looking home building.

http://www.monolithicdome.com/

We are seriously thinking about building our house using this product in a few years. Its going to either one of these domes or using insultated concrete forms (ICF).

Why not learn from wood frame style construction?

[N8F8]

A lot of this stuff looks pretty far fetched. In America, wood frame construction has won the affordable housing race. Advancements in modular home construction could easily be used to develop even more transportable housing. The reason I say a lot of this stuff is kooky is because of the lack of standardization. At some point you also need to talk about SAFE housing and that is very difficult without standardized building practices.

So maybe a proposal in the middle would be to look at what made the wood frame style so successful and apply that to local building materials.

Re:It's supposed to be affordable

[srock2588]

Indeed, if I want to live somewhere there are jobs for a software engineer, what the hell is the point of a $12,000 structure built on land that costs $250,000 an acre on the low end? If I wanted to live cheap I would just move to rural Georgia, not build a hippy house.

Homes should be localized

[Firethorn]

One thing that gets me is that even within the United States, there are major variations in climate and weather. Yet I've seen homes pretty much identical in both North Dakota and Florida. In one you have to worry about extreme cold(-30 or so), pipes freezing, snow on the roof, etc... In florida, you have to worry more about heat, humidity, bugs, mildew/mold, precipitation, and hurricane force winds.

Why should buildings built for different areas be the same? It's not like homes are moved much, so why not customize for the conditions and building materials of the area the home is to be built in?

Look at the text, not just the pictures

[JohnnyBolla]

Apparently these are up to spec for southern california earthquake code.
That tells me one thing, that most of the people commenting here didn't read the copy, they just looked at the pictures.
But hey, the guy below that wouldn't want to SELL them wins the prize for "missing the point by the greatest margin" for 2004.

Obstacles to alternative housing also

[Sai Babu]

encourage huge residential structures.

1)Property tax is generally based on number of square feet so municipalities have minimum square foot requirements in zoning.

2)Mortgage valuation is heavily weighted by the number of square feet. Cost per square foot goes down as total area goes up encouraging huge houses.

3)Zoning prohibits alternative materials. In Hawaii, where we now live most of the time, it's entirely practical to build a house using split, woven, bamboo walls in single wall construction over a timber (steel, wood, bamboo, or concrete) frame. It makes for very comfortable tropical housing, the walls are typically replaced avery 10 years or so. There is no need to paint. But, try getting a permit for something like this! Also in the tropics, outbuildings for kitchen (much safer from a fire hazard POV) and WC/bath (keeps dampness from main house in tropical climate) are impossible to get through zoning.

4)Alternative construction is foreign to most architects and builders and ends up costing a LOT more. I've been researching a concrete house for some property I own on the East Coast. Finding someone affordable who is familiar with modern concrete construction (foam forms, polished aggregate flooring, embedded radiant heat, etc) is an exercise in futility. Few people do enough of this sort of work that you either pay for someone to learn or pay the premium of someone who's experience is in short supply.

5)Then there are the damn neighbors who don't want anything that doesn't look like the mail order Sears Roebuck craftsman style houses that are already in the neighborhood but for some stange reason have no problem adding square feet (2nd floor) to their houses as long as it has the right 'look'.

Re:It's supposed to be affordable

[Suidae]

I thought the 1800 included the tubing?

I think you have to supply the dirt yourself though. I sure rather do that then have them FedEx it.