Plowboy Interview: David Wright
Talking with David Wright about designing houses for solar energy.
September/October 1977
Travis Brock
There's a new breed of architect stirring in the land, a breed that you should get to know. Because it has The Secret . . . The Secret that can free you from the utility companies and so many of the other entities in our corporate society that demand-and get-their daily ransom, their daily pound of flesh, from you.
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Think of a world of beauty and freedom. A world in which all the buildings nestle into the landscape as naturally as if they'd always been there. A world in which your house is built almost entirely of earth and stone and timber and costs you as little as $.9.00 a square foot. A world in which that house-once completed-keeps you and your family warm and snug and dry and comfortable for the rest of your lives . . . while never costing you a penny for electricity, or oil, or any other form of commercially available energy.
Farfetched? Not at all. Because there is a whole new mutant spore of architects springing up among us. Architects who are, in many ways, actually throwbacks to our wisest and most nature-oriented ancestors. And those architects have already started to create the world of beauty and freedom which we've just glimpsed.
David Wright is one of those new designers.Some would even say the best of the lot. They might be right. Because David Wright has an unusual power: He has learned to peer into the past and rediscover ancient principles that allow, him to propel the present into the future.
During the past three or four years, David Wright has designed over 80 "sun tempered" and "passively solar conditioned" homes. Some of them have cost as little as $8.00 a square foot to construct. Othersjust because of the way they're positioned and put together and without any help from space heaters or air conditioners-now supply the people who live in them with almost 100% of all the heating, cooling, and other "conditioning" they need to remain comfortable. And most of those houses have been largely built of earth and stone and timber taken directly from the areas in which they've been constructed.
There is something very pure and very powerful about what David Wright is doing. And the ramifications of his work may eventually be strong enough to shake the pillars of the corporate society which now dominates us, tear away the scales of arrogant ignorance that blind our culture's eyes, and set us all free in a new life of environmentally sound self-relianceand self determination.
But where does such a man come from . . . and how does he develop his skills? The following interview, conducted by MOTHER's Travis Brock, answers those questions and traces David Wright to his present (93% heating and cooling self-sufficient) home on the coast of northern California. More details about various Wright designs will appear in future issues of this magazine.
PLOWBOY: David, for the past few years there's been a lot of talk among environmentalists about the development of a "soft" or a "gentle" technology . . . a technology that will provide us with a comfortable way of life, while substantially lessening-or doing away with altogethermankind's rape of the planet. Yet while many have been talking, only a few have been doing. And you're one of the few.
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