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Dream House
January 22, 2006
Joel Akin
A long time ago man built holes in the earth, lined them with stone and called them Earth Houses and these homes have survived a 1,000 plus years in some cases. Today we build a house of wood or concrete or brick and in less then 100 years most of them have become mounds of rubble. In many cases its understandable why we tear down old homes. Many became a mish-mash of ideas and technology, some like electrical wiring proved dangerous as wires frayed and wore out. Plumbing changed and old systems plugged up with roots and debris. Oil lamps gave way to electrical lighting but the lightbulbs changed and the styles changes and the houses simply became obsolete. And so we build houses today but to be honest I am sickened by what I see. Our cities are tossed into a Monopoly board where houses and hotels are crammed side by side. It creates a maelstrom of crime and a maelstrom of problems that will not be corrected easily.
Frankly no one seems to think. I hear architects and city planners dwelling on ways of cutting corners and modifying housing so more can fit into the same block. Condo's and complexes and discount dwellers and systems that break down under stress and a few years. Yet the cake is still the same size and the pieces you cut out for schools and churches and municipal buildings all fall within the same old flavors and styles until it takes on an artificiality that leaves a legacy of lard in your mouth, nearly impossible to spit out.
Call me an outsider who has tried to look at the entire picture from as many angles as possible. I have studied civilizations, studied ideas and dreams and concepts from thousands of minds. I have read countless hundreds of articles with endless ideas and there is no doubt mankind is boundless in enthusiasm. I do not belittle those who want to make a change towards good and I understand the struggles of change. Take any two city dwellers and one wants the wires where they can see them and another wants them buried. One wants a tree house and his neighbor calls in a complaint it ruins the neighborhood look. Then lets think of adding a green roof but the woman across the street gets a petition made because she's afraid of peeping toms. Change isn't easy. It means rethinking the way we live and in the rethinking it means we have to get off our favorite horse and study the ground we're trampling on.
There is no doubt not everyone will follow that new course. There desire is to surround themselves with walls so high that none can see or borrow or bug or betroth. Yet it brings us no closer to really helping each other or creating a culture of openness while allowing for our privacy. In a Japanese Anime Totoro there is a house the father goes to with his daughters amidst the rice paddies. Though there is no electricity there is water and food brought forth from the earth. And there are neighbors who open up their lives and treat each other with respect. And yet what I enjoyed most beyond the simple wonders of this home was the hope and magic the girls brought to the movie. They brought joy to their father, to their school.
It wasn't about paved roads and electrical lines, though you saw those. It wasn't about telephones though they too were present. It was about family and mystery and magic.
Sometimes that magic is lost because we lose ourselves in the culture we create. That culture we create blocks us in within our walls, our concrete and asphalt. We put in parks but they are seen almost as side issues created because we 'must' and not because we love. There is not much sense in telling people to tear down those walls. They remain and we remain part of that culture but I will be honest, it is a culture that can only lead to our downfall. Why? Because this type of society we create is built on the belief we do not need to be self sufficient in any way. In fact our way of thinking is to move further and further away from self sufficiency. And the further away we move the more dangerous it becomes that sooner or later we will cross one line too many. This culture breaths in but it can't breath out. It inhales but has no way of exhaling. So what do I mean when I say this? Think of the endless vistas of homes and businesses and towers of stone and yet nowhere to be found are the means of survival. We bring in our food, all of our water, our fuel, and all means of growth. There are few of us who knows where our food is from or where things are found and we think nothing of throwing away this knowledge and letting it lie on the ground as worthless seed.
Growing up in the sixties I remember the chickens and the gardens and the hoeing and the caring for vegetables but somewhere along the line the stores began to provide these things. Laws came into effect and it became harder to harvest from nature and you needed licenses to do so. Which I understand. But it becomes harder to find means of survival when we push away the knowledge that was taught to us when we were younger.
So now I speak of a restoration. A means of restoring, slowly, some of those things we need to help sustain ourselves towards a better future. The ideas I have are many but the gist of it is this. That we relook at the way we live and build and think and try, try, try to take a step forward toward change.
Change means thinking and thinking requires you and me to accept one thing. We have to get out of the box and that box is comfortable. We need to start building homes that are designed to last us a 1,000 years and we need to come up with a home that leads to self sufficiency in all the areas you can imagine from fuel, lighting, even food if we wish. We can do it. It means integrating the home, making it part of nature and the earth, recycling our materials we bring in. Most would say its too difficult. They are right. It is. It means we have to create an entirely new series of industries and ways of building and making our homes from the materials we find on site. It means stretching our thinking and using the very latest technologies while sticking to tried and true materials. Call it a synergistic way of life.
And best of all it doesn't mean that you have to build it or create it or do anything. You can still have it built for you but lets do away with the cardboard cutouts and create a house where the parts of it come with 25 year warranties and where technological changes means we flow with the times and old modules are replaced with new ones.
There are obstacles to be overcome beyond our own reluctance to change. There are technological hurdles and equipment that will need to be designed. There are industries to be created and people to be trained and retrained. Every aspect of our way of life will change but once we begin to understand what's in store I believe we will rejoice at the simplicity that can return to our lives. Instead of worrying about the broken fridge or water main those become part of the warranty of the house builders and only those who stand by their warranties will be allowed to be part of this dream.
Every step forward requires us to analyze and I realize we can question so much we never move from where we are. Industries may not wish to change and some may fall by the wayside. But the end result will be a culture where we have our cake and can share it. We can create a place where we open ourselves to our neighbors while still retaining our privacy. And perhaps ways of removing not just some of the walls but some of the fences all of us desire to put up. I know they have to come down someday and perhaps today is a perfect day to begin.
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