Sustainable Architecture News: The Phoenix Earthship, Taos, New Mexico, EUA

Technical Information:

Project: House (The Phoenix Earthship)

Year: 2006 - 2012

Area: 465 m2

Budget: € 1.366.992

Location: Taos, New Mexico, EUA

Architect: Michael Reynolds

This Earthship house is located at the north end of the Greater World Earthship Community just across the Rio Grande Gorge from Taos County, New Mexico, USA.

Earthship homes are built using recycled materials from Taos County. The mainly applied materials were used tires and plastic bottles filled with local earth , used glass and cans bottles. The glass bottles have several different colors which creates a very interesting kind of environment, when sunlight passes through those walls.

Earthships make their own electricity from solar panels; catch their own water from rain and snow melt; contain and reuse their own waste water; and provide their own heating and cooling without the use of fossil fuels via passive solar and thermal mass architecture. We continue to evolve basic mechanical components and to simplify structural details toward this goal.

The Phoenix earthship is composed by 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths w ith Tubs, full kitchen, dining room and living room (with fireplace). Furthermore it's possible to grow food in a jungle greenhouse, that also contains a fish pond, that can grow eatable fish.

Earthships Design Principles:

1) Thermal/Solar Heating & Cooling

Earthships maintain comfortable temperatures in any climate. The planet Earth is a thermally stabilizing mass that delivers temperature without wire or pipes. The sun is a nuclear power plant that also delivers without wires or pipes.

2) Solar & Wind Electricity

Earthships produce their own electricity with a prepackaged photovoltaic / wind power system. This energy is stored in batteries and supplied to your electrical outlets. Earthships can have multiple sources of power, all automated, including grid-intertie.

3) Contained Sewage Treatment

Earthships contain use and reuse all household sewage in indoor and outdoor treatment cells resulting in food production and landscaping with no pollution of aquifers. Toilets flush with treated grey water that does not smell.

4) Building with Natural & Recycled Materials

House as Assemblage of by-products: A sustainable home must make use of indigenous materials, those occurring naturally in the local area.

5) Water Harvesting

Earthships catch water from the sky (rain & snow melt) and use it four times. Water is heated from the sun, biodiesel and/or natural gas. Earthships can have city water as backup. Earthships do not pollute underground water aquifers.

6) Food Production

Earthship wetlands, the planters that hold hundreds of gallons of water from sinks and the shower are a great place for raising some fresh products you’d like to have in the winter.

Major Goals of the Earthship Community

To reduce the economic and institutional barriers between people and sustainable housing.

To begin reversing the overall negative effect that conventional housing has on the planet.

To create a less stressful existence for people.

To interface economics and ecology in a way that immediately and tangibly affects current pressing problems with existing life styles.

To provide a direction for those who want to live in harmony with their environment.

To empower individuals with the inarguable forces of nature.

To find and distribute knowledge about sustainable lifestyles.

- Produce our own energy;
- Harvest our own water;
- Contain and treat our own sewage;
- Manufacture our own bio-diesel fuel;
- Grow much of our own food;
- Our buildings heat and cool themselves;
- Made utilizing discarded materials of modern society.