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re: alternative can mean more than old tires
8 jun 1997
kevin willmorth wrote:
>interesting about how we view design.
a matter of taste? "fitting" or pleasing the eye?
>alternative architecture, if taken in the context of this group would
>suggest radical departures...
among other things. why not? things need to change in the next 50 years.
>the use of old tires filled with dirt,
seems labor-intensive to me, and the resulting walls will hardly stand up,
and they aren't good insulators.
>water drums in our yards and attics,
i have about a hundred drums in my "yard," but that's just a hobby :-) they
don't help heat my house. why put drums in yards? maybe a good idea in attics,
for solar heating, a la norman saunders, pe. who knows they are there? maybe
better to put the drums on the ground, out of sight, inside a closet. who
knows they are there?
>visquine walls, solar systems and houses bristeling with recycled garbage,
>round or domed shapes and messy neighborhoods that might look more like
>shanty towns than main street america.
people said beethoven's music was ugly too, at the time. i like the clean
and minimal look of commercial plastic film greenhouses. some people like
private solar houses, and welcome the cloudiness of greenhouse polyethylene
film, along with the cost (5 cents/ft^2, a hundred times less than glass).
bayer dureflex 7018 (36 cents/ft^2, randall brinkman, bayer corp/polymers
division/100 bayer road/pittsburgh, pa 15205-9741, (412) 777-3837) is a lot
clearer than visqueen, and has a 10 year guarantee. recycling it every 10
years might take 2 hours, if it's attached with aluminum extrusion clamps.
>meanwhile, other forms of alternative architecture, such as precast and
>poured in place concrete, steel structures, glass houses (ala phillip
>johnson), earth integrated contemporary designs (re morphosis) and other
>systems that create great appearing structures that are low maintenance,
>highly efficient, could be adapted to many different life styles and
>residential civil designs, are not even discussed.
they seem more expensive, and more difficult for owner-builders to do, rubbing
against the spirit of housing and energy independence. "great appearing" seems
to depend on the time and the person. solar houses can have different shapes
and materials, with similar engineering.
>going into a long disertation on the attributes of thin wall designs, or
>water storage systems, or other methods that are either high maintenance,
>require regular service or attention of the occupants (re: active systems),
>is interesting for about 1% of the population, will have little or no real
>effect on the use of energy in the country and hardly constitute viable
>alternative architecture in the real world.
i disagree, but these are such general pontifications. active and passive
labels hardly seem useful now. it's more a matter of degree, no? how much
maintenance? how much regular service? can "passive" systems contain small
fans, with a cop of 10,000, if that makes them less expensive, and a lot
simpler than oil burners?
>personally i like the responsible consumer conservation gig, high aesthetics,
>robust designs that can be applied across large application ranges...
me too. but i'm not sure about these "high aesthetics"...
nick
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