HUNDERTWASSER'S GRASS ROOFS

Image Gallery

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In amongst the testimonial from the Central American missionary who uses MOTHER as his chief teaching aid when working with the most primitive tribes still living in his section of the jungle ... and the correspondence from the sheep station in Australia ... and the mail from the wholistic gardeners, Alaskan sourdoughs, New Mexico back-to-the-landers, and all the rest of MOTHER's people the other day ... we found yet another interesting letter.

It was from Venice, Italy and it was from a world traveling artist/Inventor who calls himself Hundertwasser. "Your article about the grass roofOfMr. Davis in MOTHER NO. 46 is very interesting," the letter began. 'I've waited for the grass roof house to happen for a very long time. I was working on these and other ecological solutions sinceabout 20 years and I am sending you a short documentation. "

Well now. That "short documentation" contained some very good ideas and color photographs of models of sod-roofed and underground buildings (even one real sod-roofed house) that we thought you'd like to see. So here are a new of those ideas and photos.

EYE-SLIT HOUSE

This is a house for one family only, so totally integrated into nature that it is practically invisible. This makes it particularly useful for farmers or in landscape preserves.

The front of the house faces the sun and the roof turns to the cold. One can walk through the landscape without realizing that one walks on roofs.

Such a house is very light and sunny ... more so than a normal house because this one has large south-facing windows and skylights which let in the sun from above.

The ventilation and insulation of this house are excellent too, and the building is cool in summer and warm in winter. The house is more comfortable to live in than an ordinary one. It is safer to live in. And there is nothing more beautiful than to go for a walk on one's own roof.

A TERRACED HOUSE FOR MANY TREES AND MANY PEOPLE

This is a practical example of an ecologically sound house that is no longer a foreign body in its surroundings. The horizontal belongs to nature, the vertical to man. Wherever the snow and rain falls, vegetation must be allowed to grow free. Roofs must become forests and roads green valleys. The relationship between man and nature must become a religious one. Only if you love the tree as you love yourself will you survive.

SPIRAL HOUSE

This house recycles all the used water from its bathrooms and sinks. Polluted water is pumped up onto the roof by--perhaps-a windmill. The water then flows down in a spiral ... seeping, as it goes, through bulrushes, reeds, water hyacinths, and grass. It arrives at the bottom almost clean ... ready to be reused, or pumped to the top again for another trip down through this beautiful, natural purification plant.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print