Designing the House#

Zone Zero. Hearth and home. We started designing the house almost before we found land. Common wisdom says, "Engage an architect. Leave design to a professional." Certainly true for more complex or technically-demanding buildings, but for a home in a self-sufficient permaculture setup? Who knows better what such a home needs than the people who will inhabit it? How much time would an architect have spent on considering solar angles? Integrating several backup systems for house water? Separating grey water from black water for separate treatment? Thinking about all the different alternatives for cycling our body-waste nutrients back into the food chain? We must have spent thousands of hours thinking about, researching, understanding, designing and redesigning all these elements and more.

We worked through several dozen designs, plotted out on graph-paper. Designs ranging from Merely Alternative, to Downright Funky and not omitting Dreadfully Conventional. Construction materials from ordinary brick and mortar, to wattle-and-daub, cob, precast concrete, rammed Earth and Earthship-style filled tyres were all given equal time. Roman-villa based design, multiple small buildings connected by walkways, beehive-based design, geodesic domes, underground building; anything was game.

• Basic Requirements
• The House in its Context