It's been quite a biotecture journey this past few weeks as I immerse myself in the design of a new earthship model to suit the harsh and very hot climate of Portugal. Biotecture is very different to architecture because there is a lot more consideration to the size, proportions, location, and overall functionality and performance. The easiest way to explain the difference is that a home built on biotecture will work autonomously to keep you warm, cool, watered and even fed at almost no cost, power or time and effort. A home built with architecture principles does not (yet) even attempt to achieve this kind of autonomy or self sufficiency and instead rely on the grid to supply enough electricity and power to run the many high power systems that a normal home requires to stay habitable. Examples are air conditioning, heating (including burning wood) , and water heaters. Those three devices alone can use a combined power of up to 10Kw or more. Note that in Biotecture all these machines are replaced with natural systems that perform just as well, if not better, than these high cost, high maintenance systems.
So, the designs that you see here are tweaked and adapted to suit the exact location and climate of the area that I plan to build in. I will explain some of these below to give you a sense of how it works. These principles work the best in Earthships, but can be applied to other types of homes as well. Ultimately it is about just few dynamics, namely the amount of Sun (Solar Gain) that the home receives, the amount of mass (thermal mass) in the walls and structure of the home to help keep it thermally stable (think of the heavy earthen walls as batteries that can keep temperatures inside fairly stable and constant).
FEATURES OF THE DESIGN
- Since this is a hot climate I am minimising the amount of exposure to the west and also south. The building is oriented South, and it is very well buffered against the hot south and west sun on long summer days by the shape of the structure, the lack of glass on the west side of the home, and most importantly the thick earthen berm that surrounds the back and west side of this spiral earthship.
- The greenhouse at the front is an important buffer against high and low temperatures. The front glazing will be very good double glazing and that area has open-able skylight vents that can be opened to allow the entire home to vent hot air. On hot days, when the greenhouse skylights are open the hot air escapes through the roof by natural convection current flows. When this happens new air is sucked into the home from the very back where long air pipes come through the walls. These pipes are mostly buried behind the house and the air that passes through it cools down naturally as it moves through the pipe. This whole system works with no power, no machines, no moving parts.. it simple relies on the natural processes of thermal exchange.
- The position of all water outlets is carefully considered. Generally you want to place the grey water outlets like the kitchen sink and shower to be as close to the greenhouse as possible. This makes plumbing easy so that water can pass to these botanical cells and feed the plants. The toilet is also best placed by an external wall so that we can easily bring the effluent out and treat it naturally outside of the home. Water treatment is performed using bacteria to digest solid materials, and special plant treatments cells to further clean the water up until it is clean enough to use for irrigating outdoor plants.
- The shape itself is a spiral. This means the structure is very stable and strong. It also has two rooms that have round walls attached to it. These walls provide a few very important benefits. First they will of course be the walls and boundaries of the rooms. These round walls will also help to support the beams that support the roof. Since they are round they also help to further stabilize the main spiral wall, also called buttressing. The bedroom walls would be made using earth-bags since they hold a lot of thermal mass, use less space than tyres, are quick and cheap to make, and more! Since these bedroom walls are closer to the south facing side where the greenhouse is, they will pick up more sun in the day than the back walls of the spiral. We don’t want too much sun in this house, but we need some so that the home stays warm during the winter.
- The greenhouse glass is a straight vertical wall of glass like you would find in any normal structure. Earthships often have that glass face made at an angle to pick up more sun, but in this case we don’t want to much sun and it doesn’t get that cold in winter. It is also much easier and cheaper to build a glass wall that is straight and vertical.
- There are quite a few Vastu (Indian Fueng Shui) considerations made on this home. These concepts are esoterica in nature and include things like, the front door faces east to pick up the morning sun energy. The bathroom is situated in the west / north side of the home. The bed in the bedroom does not face the door but the door can be seen from the bed. The toilet is not visible from the bedroom. The en-suite door is probably not the best thing for vastu, but i have made one to the toilet for convenience. Finally, the entire home being a Fibonacci spiral is in and of itself a very good thing!
SO! I hope that gives you a sense of biotecture, and the kind of things we think about when building an earthship. There is of course much more that can be said about this design and the reasons why it may well be able to function better than anything else that currently exists in this location. I will only know for sure once it is built and can test it and observe it in action, but imagine IF even in this extremely harsh and dry climate if we can end up with a working model for a home that is truly self sufficient and performs as it should year round with almost no bills or maintenance. That is the promise of Biotecture.
Please note that the exact design and look of objects like windows, doors and furniture are yet to be determined. You can get a sense of the overall home, and layout from this image.. but there is no interior design yet.. It will look much more beautiful when completed, including features like glass bottle walls.
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