Event Description
Join us to learn about a wide range of alternatives to traditional housing that may help address environmental and economic challenges in the future.
Featuring:
Bridgette Meinhold, Architecture Editor for Inhabitat.com and author of Urgent Architecture and Jonah Reynolds of Earthship Biotecture
With global population on the rise and the climate changing rapidly, housing challenges will only continue to grow. There will be ever-greater needs for imaginative, sustainable, cost-effective and easily constructed dwellings. We also need to look at cost-effective retrofits for the types of existing housing stock we have in Philadelphia.
Earthships, homes that are made of natural and recycled materials and that are designed to take advantage of solar energy, are one example of unconventional dwellings. These homes could help solve housing problems in challenged communities by providing very affordable, disaster-resistant, sustainable shelter. They get electricity from sun and wind; water from rain and snow; are heated and cooled by the sun and the earth, have on-site sewage treatment, and offer places to grow food.
Jonah Reynolds is a world-renowned Earthship builder and educator. He has presented the Earthship design to city government officials and environmental organizations and at educational facilities all over the world. He also works as an educator at The Phoenix, an Earthship in New Mexico that serves as a learning academy and visitors’ center at the Sustainable Solutions headquarters. The Earthship Academy is the only fully sustainable off-grid school in the world that teaches sustainable design. With more than 30 years of experience in building and design, Reynolds has unique expertise in the green community.
On Friday, May 24, attend a related screening of the film Garbage Warrior at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia (1906 South Rittenhouse Square, 215-735-3456). Attendees of the Academy’s Unconventional Dwellings event receive free admission. |
