Zero cost homes?

Even without floods doing their bit, the numbers of homeless are millions. When they could easily be provided shelter simply by using the things the rest of us throw out as waste. Old tires. Old bottles. Beer Cans. Plastic containers.

So many birds in one stone! Turning waste into shelters. Reducing the dependence on scarce resources. Using less water and energy!

The ‘Earthship’ concept of American architect Michael Reynolds is slowly but surely catching up. The latest to join the crew is a small community in the San Juan Del Sur region of Nicaragua.

They have created an entirely off-grid, sustainable community, titled Casa Llanta ("Tire House"). In India, a similar concept was tried out at Kodaikanal.

Earthships use materials that can be found in the community to build "cheap" homes, coupled with rainwater catchment systems, solar panels and other construction techniques to develop a community with the lightest footprint possible.

Natural heating without electricity and a more reliable water supply through rainwater catchment and storage for cooking and for growing crops are some of its selling points. In addition, throwaway materials like tires, glass, plastic containers and aluminum cans are incorporated into construction, along with minimal construction materials like cement, for example, to create structures that are more easily reproduced.

The Nicaraguan project began back in December 2007 with preparation of materials, like packing tires with dirt as "bricks" and cutting/cleaning glass bottles. To get involved with Earthships in your local community, or by volunteering internationally, check out www.earthship.net

Home, as it was meant to be?? How about getting students at your nearby school to work on such ideas?

Lasting homes

Homes in the future could last forever. Well, almost! A concrete material developed at the University of Michigan can heal itself when it cracks. No human intervention is necessary—just water and carbon dioxide to heal and form a thin white scar of calcium carbonate.

Self-healing is possible because the material is designed to bend and crack in narrow hairlines rather than break and split in wide gaps, as traditional concrete behaves.

Failures often occur when traditional concrete is strained in an earthquake or by routine overuse as it is brittle and rigid. But the flexibility of engineered cement composite, or ECC (which acts more like metal than glass), prevents this occurrence. The bendable ECC remains intact and safe up to tensile strains of 5 percent where traditional concrete fractures and can’t carry a load at .01 percent tensile strain.

At present, building structures are constructed using steel bars to keep cracks as small as possible. But they’re not small enough to heal, so water and salts can penetrate to the steel, causing corrosion that further weakens the structure. Self-healing concrete needs no steel reinforcement to keep crack width tight, so it eliminates corrosion. And costs! And energy!

Natural materials have long been shown to be the best when it comes to temperature modulation and costs. Bamboo, kemp, etc have been used effectively. But more and more traditional homes all over the country are being replaced by concrete structures – for its strength. Are we headed in the right direction?

Rank holders stand tall

A soaring sustainable skyscraper, 632 metres tall, is set to become the tallest tower in China. To come up in China’s rapidly developing Luijiazui Finance and Trade Zone, the skyscraper will feature a high-performance façade that shelters nine sky gardens, a rainwater system and a series of wind turbines on its parapet.

It will be composed of a set of nine cylindrical buildings stacked on top of each other and surrounded by an inner façade. The carefully considered structure and texture work together to reduce wind loads on the building by 24%, saving building materials and construction costs. It will be completed in 2014.

Impressive.

There sure is a scramble for the label of ‘sustainable’ but how authentic are these claims? In many cases, there are the lip services paid to renewable energy. The embodied energy of materials used is ignored. Out of this world design threatens to dislodge practicalities.

Are architects adding eco-bling (hype) to their buildings? And not dealing with fundamentals? Seems so going by Dubai’s proposed Anara building which actually houses people inside the wind turbine atop! ‘It is an energy nightmare, it is terrifying!’

Compounding the problems in the area of buildings and architecture are the rating systems. Builders would like to boast of the US LEED rating, but many critics have pointed to the lack of relevance to local conditions in the way the rating has been designed and is followed religiously.

It is to plug this lacuna that the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) took the initiative to adapt the rating to Indian conditions. CII with Godrej GBC are the sole licence holders to offer LEED India rating programs.

How satisfactory are the changes in the rating system? Do we need a rating system at all? If you have an opinion let us know.

Creative flows

Terrorists now unleashed on streets, gunning down people at random. New evidence of glaciers in the Himalayas melting even faster than predicted. Lot of doomsday scenarios closing in!

Let’s take a break from serious stuff and see what creative innovation is doing in the world of sustainable architecture.

It looks like a huge bubble or a big blob of mercury perched on the alpine slope but is a retreat for nature lovers who want to feel the environment and still enjoy safe comforts! Powered by solar panels and a vertical axis wind turbine, the off-grid alpine retreat features a shimmering glass skin with a reflective coating that allows individuals to sleep under the stars while admiring a 360-degree panorama of the beautiful landscape.

The capsule is designed by Ross Lovegrove, a Welsh architect. The Alpine Capsule is an 8-meter wide structure with a double-glass skin that is covered with a special reflective coating. The coating meant to reflect the structure’s surroundings and blend in with the environment. Focussing on sustainability and self-sufficiency, it will be off-grid and powered by a “power plant,” which integrates a vertical axis wind turbine and solar panels.

Lovegrove’s has come up with unique ideas for travel and lighting. Like a four passenger vehicle, another transparent bubble in which the four passengers sit in a circular fashion. There is no driver, as the vehicles are controlled by satellite and GPS navigation. The vehicles are powered by solar panels installed in the roof. The innovation comes in his proposal to stick each vehicle at night on top of a pole in order to both save space at the ground level, and to illuminate! It looks like a UFO as you can see from the picture.

Some call it neat, others call it impractical with no front or back to the cars posing dangers, besides the problem of space for many of these on the lamppost!

Solar plant like trees for illumination designed by Ross were inaugurated at Vienna recently.
Are these meant for the drawing board? Are they really sustainable? Or mere hype? While they use natural lighting and renewable sources, what about the materials used? How much of embodied energy do they carry?