Right now there’s a technology and design competition going on in Washington D.C.’s National Mall (which is ironically the crappiest mall for shopping in the whole country). The contest, called the Solar Decathlon is pitting 20 teams formed of universities, colleges and design schools from around the world against eachother and aims at pushing the boundaries of self sufficient and energy efficient home design. Vancouver is represented by some talented SFU students whose Team Ontario/BC  or Team North as they prefer to be called (also comprised of Ryerson and Waterloo students) is within striking distance of the podium; currently in 6th place with 6 more days to go. The team scored the highest out of the 20 entries in the Comfort category – ironic considering most new homes in Vancouver are 500 square feet. Tell me…what am I going to do with 40 sq feet of “flex space”? More like a 40 square foot junk drawer. Anyhow…

This contest has laudable aims, but if I may be critical for a moment, we’ve had much of this technology and many of the concepts for a much longer time than many people think. The Earthship design concept has been in use since the 1970s and despite being in every state and, dozens of countries and having a major planned community in Taos New Mexico it is still largely a novelty housing design. Two of the fundamental ideas underpinning the Earthship philosophy is that we have enough post-consumer material to construct buildings with-we don’t need to cut down forests or mine new areas, and that we have enough energy to power a home coming directly from the sun, wind, or from geothermal sources. It’s a psychological barrier more than a technological or material one that we need to pass. In mainstream media these houses are said to be “made of garbage” when in fact much of what we use today is made of garbage. Green public building projects have adopted the Earthship philosophy into their concepts and many new roads, parking lots, and other projects are now made from post consumer products. At a civic level the impetus for it is frugality and utility, the barrier at the personal level is access and ego. We want new things, shiny things, but these materials themselves are not useful only in one specific format. And they become a technology when their use is altered. It is this notion that technology has to be new rather than useful, and its journey to our hands is through a top down distribution, that forms this barrier in my opinion. An old tire isn’t building technology- it’s just garbage. Rainwater isn’t drinking water, and electricity is something made by big companies, not something that can be harnessed by individuals. By and large these are in fact truisms, anchored in cultural static, but by no stretch are they absolute and unchangeable. Earthships defy this notion of technology by incorporating things like tires and cans to hold infill or insulation in foundations and walls. Old materials, new process, new technology. Is it accessible to the average man on the street? Economies of scale hasn’t entered the business plan lexicon of the Earthship community by my esitmation. Nevertheless, they remain pioneers and I believe they’ve helped to pave the way for events like the Solar Decathlon.  

Despite the fact that sustainable housing is in fact an older and more established idea than the Decathlon might let on, I am very excited about the event because it does put focus on making these concepts and designs more market-ready. Earthships (perhaps because of their outrageously hokey name) are still considered a fringe design- but these houses on the National Mall of the United States, the most powerful economic force on the planet, are bringing these concepts to the forefront. They incorporate modern design and convenience with the spirit of technological innovation. I hope they’ll be the rule and not the exception one day soon. That’s just the way things go though. It takes a while for new technology or approaches to bubble to the surface sometimes, and after that it takes even more time for the public to accept them as normal. The microwave became popular in the 80s- it was invented just after WW2. Don’t even get me started on the secret space program. I think we’re full on Star Trek next gen at this point. But that’s for another post. In THE FUTURE….(insert whoosh sound)

Good luck Team North!