#earthship home

[sustainablecore]

Top 7 Reasons Earthship Homes Redefine Sustainability

Earthship homes represent a revolutionary approach to sustainable living, combining innovative design, recycled materials, and renewable energy systems. These self-sustaining dwellings offer a multitude of environmental benefits, from reducing carbon footprints to conserving water resources.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

'Vallecitos' is a luxury earthship house built in 2018 in Taos, NM. It's been featured on Netflix, international TV and social media, among the pages of Forbes and AirBnB magazine, and many others, yet it's been on the market for almost 2 yrs. 2bds, 2ba, asking $825K + $20mo. HOA fee. Let's take a look inside.

So, the typically long earthship garden that is usually inside the house, is separate here, and like a greenhouse decorated with bottles in the pretty turquoise walls.

Food grows out here- I see lettuce, aloe vera.

And, look at this- bananas. Or are they plantains?

I must say that the living room is nice, but the dining area is a little tight.

We've seen some pretty primitive earthships before, but this actually looks like a home with beamed ceilings and quality glass doors and windows.

A real kitchen and it's very pretty. Love the turquoise cabinets.

It even has a pantry and laundry room.

Very nice bath and what looks like a real flushing toilet, not a composter.

Beautiful tile sink.

The secondary bedroom is lovely. It looks like a child's room and has plenty storage for toys, games and books. A desk faces the garden window.

As we can see, the garden runs the whole length of the large "ship."

The primary bedroom is nice.

It opens to the garden area.

Pretty en-suite. I would need something on that window, though.

Out on the patio they have a sauna.

Patio looking out over the 2.31 acre lot.

View of the back of th house with the sauna and patio.

Partial privacy wall around a deck.

Aerial view of the property shows grass and vegetation, but it's quite vast and empty.

Glamor shot of it at night.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/27-Earthship-Way-Taos-NM-87577/2061804094_zpid/?

[the-hippie-home]

[departmentofinteriors]

[sin-ophelia]

[elderwisp]

◁ || ▷

Gabriel: Hey, you sure your Dad’s okay with us doing this?

Ares: Tsh, you’re just borrowing his studio, nothing crazy.

Gum: Gabriel! Try this shit, it’s so good.

Gabriel: Jumpscare. What’s on it? 

Gum: I don’t know, some fancy cheese for sure. 

Ares: It’s just a mushroom cheeseburger with some gouda. I bought some from my friend’s restaurant. 

Gum: Well they certainly know how to cook.

Gabriel: Holy shit.

Gum: Right?!

Gabriel: Not bad, hey did Alice say she would show?

Gum: She said she couldn’t make it.

Gabriel: Dude, that’s like the third time this week.

Ares: You might need to find a new vocalist.

Gabriel: Know anyone?

Gum: Wait, hold up, we should at least try to reach out to her. Maybe she’s going through something. 

Gabriel: I get that but if you want to try to get a hold of her, be my guest. The gig is next week and I don’t want to cancel.

Gum: I’ll figure something out. Trust. 

---

Ares: Dad? 

?: Love you, I had to dip out to De Sol Valley, we signed a new artist so I’ve gotta go to the studio for a few days. Feel free to order anything - Dad

[sidewalkchemistry]

[thehandwixard]

i just think. like. 'oh mudbrick and cob you need to maintain it more' yeah and??? i think i would enjoy if a part of my week was being a caretaker of my home and lovingly checking the earth it is composed of to make sure its maintained correctly. if this was combined with having to leave home less to work. you understand me

theseus was a bitch etc etc etc. give me more tatami floors

[earthkeyper]

Discover a Sustainable Haven- Phoenix Earthship Full Tour

[dessertgeek]

Just adding that maybe you can't make a 100% Earthship of your dreams, but there are a lot of ways to get close! (Says the person who researched them to death thanks to concerns about moisture and earthquakes in the PNW when all the most famous Earthships are in New Mexico)

General rammed earth builders are out there, same to cob house builders and earth sheltered homes. Just definitely check local building laws first (like I just found out there are international codes for cob houses), and the cheapest way to get one might be to attend a training workshop. Earthships are awesome but it's nice to know more options are out there!

I feel like yall don't know bout earthships??

An earthship is a building that's built out of recycled materials (glass bottles, old tires, cans, etc..) and mostly Cob walls with solarpanels, wind turbines, greenhouses, and large water capture system to ensure all you need within the walls. All these components help regulate the temp for both plants and you creating a proper oasis from all of itnall

Here's a good dissection of one to give you an idea

The most famous one, and one of the first ones ever made back in the 1970s by a small off grid group working together is The Phoenix which was built as the model for how cool these guys could be its now a place you can take tours or rent-

But now there is so many different styles and cool ideas for it! Now some of these are merely concepts

But you can adapt them to any weather for your particular light/weather/energy conditions.

The main thing about Earthships is typically they are illegal to build as the US government considers them waste sites due to the materials their built out of.

[the-hippie-home]

[lenbryant]

Earth ships don’t sink.

[jayjay-barnes]

My only goal in life 💖💐 and I don’t care whereas long as it’s NOT in a city. As I’m a country gal.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

The Atlantis is the fanciest Earth Ship I've ever seen. For one, it's turquoise. Wow, it looks like there's nothing around it for miles, but supposedly it's in an Earthship Community in Tres Piedras, New Mexico. 2bds, 2ba, $900K.

Interesting that the walls are painted, usually they're natural adobe and earthy tones. It has the typical long "hall" of plants in the entrance and along the side.

There's always a garden along the outer wall of the home.

This one has a stone and tile fireplace. Look at the hole in the wall. I wonder why it has shutters.

This is a relatively small earth ship. The cans, bottles, or whatever they used in the walls look jewel-like. For an earth ship, this is kind of a classy dining area.

The kitchen is small and looks sort of standard, except for the architectural salvage upper cabinets.

The primary bedroom is more of a sleeping nook and is separated by curtains.

The covered patio has a swing.

Must be very dark here at night.

They have a seating area in the corner, but I wouldn't call this a beautiful view. Almost $1M. I don't know if it's worth it.

[cognitivejustice]

What Is a Self-Sustaining Home?

A self-sustaining home, also known as a self-sufficient, autonomous or off-grid home, is designed to generate its own energy, produce its own food and manage its own waste to minimize or eliminate reliance on public utilities.

As Michael Reynolds, founder of Earthship Biotecture, a world leader in autonomous housing puts it, “Autonomous living… [is] direct living, get[ting] your energy directly from the sun, directly from the wind, directly from the biological systems on the earth.”

While sharing the goal of reduced environmental impact with “green” or “sustainable” homes, self-sustaining homes go further by allowing homeowners to break free from rising utility costs, unpredictable power outages and expensive food supply chains while using recycled or reclaimed building materials.

New construction projects can be designed to be self-sustaining from the start, but existing homes can be made more autonomous as well. Here are nine self-sustaining home ideas you can incorporate into your existing home.

[the-bramble--patch]

I’ve been seeing a few posts on minimalism going around, one being @bisquitt’s post on sustainability and minimalism—how the two terms shouldn’t be conflated, and how real sustainability is about anti-capitalism in the forms of reuse, repair, and community interdependence. Another is @allstrangeandwonderful’s post on how Minimalism is an aesthetic based around coping in the "corporate hellscape" we live in—contemporary designers gravitate towards neutral colors as a respite from the warlike corporate use of color to catch the attention of a consumer (See Mina Le's video on this concept also. She offers up a few possible reasons for this trend towards "greige" interiors, one being the inundation from advertising we experience in our everyday lives).

I wanted to talk about these concepts and tie in some other things I’ve been seeing around.

Imo, minimalism is anti-consumerist, but not anti-capitalist. The lifestyle and aesthetic is intended to address the systemic problem of living in a consumerist society on an individual level. Instead of ending the capitalist system that thrusts consumerism on us all, it suggests that minimalists create a safe space away from consumerism. It is not interested in changing the system, only the individual. What really drove this home for me was watching The Financial Diet on YouTube interview The Minimalists, the guys who kicked off the trend. She keeps trying to ask them about the underlying issues Minimalism acts as a band-aid for, and they keep dodging her questions.

The lifestyle choices bisquitt offers up as sustainable are typically lumped under the umbrella of Solarpunk: “fixing shit around your house. thrifting. patching clothes and handing them down. a community garden. potluck dinner parties. farmer’s markets. a barter system among friends and neighbors. kindness. love among community members.“ These things do not conform to the minimalist aesthetic tenets of order, function, and simplicity. They are often vibrant, mismatched, and chaotic, messy even (see my post on solarpunk aesthetics here). This is because solarpunk aims to solve the same issues minimalism does, but on a societal level. Solarpunk is working towards a utopian future of degrowth, where the forces that Minimalism is in opposition to will no longer exist. This allows for everyday people to reclaim vibrancy from corporations. That busyness is only desirable in a world where capitalism isn't such a burden. Solarpunk advocates for simplicity in all but design, instead of the other way around.

Another thing is the separation between meaning and function present in Minimalism. Minimalism is often associated with deriving pleasure from experiences, not things. The physical space is deprioritized (I know the movement is about changing the physical space, but the idea is that the physical space just makes your life more efficient) for a kind of zen outlook about mind over matter. Solarpunk is much more holistic in its recognition that inner peace comes from a play between the external and internal worlds—from connection and respect for people, things, and resources. Instead of removing meaning and beauty from a space to prioritize the mind, Solarpunk instills it, to elicit interaction with the world instead of a retreat from it. Thus, Solarpunk rolls meaning and function into one: a visibly mended shirt is both functional (the hole is gone), and meaningful (it says much more about the politics of the wearer than one mended invisibly). Another example is the bottle walls commonly used in Earthships: Making the bottles visible is beautiful, and it communicates that the builder is interested in using sustainable material.

In short, minimalism is individualist while Solarpunk is collectivist, and the aesthetics of each reflect that. Retreating from a broken society will not fix said society. Sustainability needs to be solved on a societal level, so minimalism as a solution to overconsumption just isn't gonna cut it.