Mike Reynolds is far more than a "Garbage Warrior"!

I recently saw and thoroughly enjoyed the 2007 documentary film Garbage Warrior about the visionary architect Mike Reynolds, who developed and has been building "radically sustainable" earthship homes for decades. While his designs consistently and ingeniously employ "garbage" throughout, reuse is only one of the important aspects of his amazing work.

Of course, reuse of frequently discarded items is an integral part of earthship design, minimizing footprint and cost, as well as required construction skills. With the help of concrete, used cans and bottles become both structural and aesthetic elements, and used tires rammed with dirt from the site help form strong walls and act as thermal mass to store passive solar heat gain.

In addition to reuse, Mike Reynolds fully recognizes that properly designed homes can actually help actively sustain their occupants while simultaneously reducing costs and ongoing impact on the planet. Earthships are incredibly self-sufficient, providing their own power, heat, water (rainwater harvesting), sewage treatment, as well as year-round (indoor) food-growing capabilities. It's amazing that since the early 1970's Reynolds has been thinking, designing and building outside the box, literally and figuratively, of conventional architecture and homes, which generally seem inanimate compared to earthships. Through years of experimentation and design evolution, he and his company Earthship Biotecture have remained focused on structures which may look unorthodox, but are very deliberately designed to meet the needs of the occupants as well as the planet itself. I encourage you to see this film.

Tardigrade House

The Tardigrade House, located in Berkeley (CA), immediately catches the eye with its biomorphic forms, further emphasized by relatively traditional, rectilinear homes in close proximity. Based on a tardigrade, an indestructible, microscopic critter that can survive in extreme conditions, this home is designed to withstand anything that might come its way. Constructed of recycled Styrofoam and cement blocks reinforced with concrete and steel into a relatively lightweight but stable lattice structure the house is, according to the designer who built it for his parents, waterproof, termite-proof, virtually impervious to fire and very earthquake-resistant.

While generally known locally as the "Fish House", the actual name is "Ojo Del Sol" or ("The Sun's Eye"). This refers to the 15 ft. south-facing, "eye-like" window that provides light and heat to the sunken rotunda living area where it radiates to adjoining spaces. Personally, I like passive solar design wherein solar heat (and natural light) initially strike a shared common area where people can congregate before radiating outwards to personal living spaces.

Eugene Tsui, the home's designer, clearly understands that nature with its time-tested engineering can effectively drive both form and function. In addition to the inextinguishable tardigrade, the Fish House design also apparently leverages nature's blueprints for the skeleton of the Cholla cactus, bone and capillary structures from a pair of dinosaurs (Stegosaurus and Dimetrodon), as well as seagull bone structure. Go here for more info and images.