The Father of Earth-Sheltered Design
(Page 2 of 3)
October/November 2006
By Charles Higginson
Wells’ writings soon began to motivate others. Steve Heckeroth, a Mother contributing editor, off-grid homesteader and an award-winning architect himself, still regards that 1971 article as a touchstone.
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“As you might guess from the fact that I have saved the short article all these years,” Heckeroth says, “it is as precious to me as any love letter I ever received. Mac, more than any other person, has influenced the way I approach a design. I still ask the 15 questions.”
Rob Roy is another Wells disciple. Roy’s books explain low-cost earth-sheltered building methods, and he refers to Wells’ ideas frequently. “As Mac says, we’re paving and roofing this country to death, especially in the urban areas,” Roy says. “One of the main things is his advocacy of building on marginal land: Go to land that’s already been raped and build there. Mac built his first architecture office in a dump in Cherry Hill, N.J.” (See Roy’s article “Earth-sheltered Homes.”)
On Buildings, Baseball & Birds
Wells has written more than a dozen books on earth-sheltered building. They’re full of sketches, ideas, plans and photographs. His books are not typeset but are printed instead in his distinctive handwriting, which, along with his conversational tone, makes reading them an unusually engaging, personal experience. Considering the seriousness of his subject, his work contains surprising doses of humorous comments, whimsical sketches and light-hearted marginalia.
Although he’s best known for his work in earth-sheltered building, Wells also has published books on other subjects: There’s one on birdhouses and birdfeeders, another about sand castles. A prolific cartoonist, he’s also published a book of humorous “explanations” of baseball slang and has illustrated more than a half-dozen books for children. He has written articles for numerous magazines, including Mother Earth News.
A Modest, Optimistic Life
Today Wells lives in Brewster, Mass., where he and his wife, Karen, operate the aptly named Underground Art Gallery. Failing health forced him to cease offering architectural services in 2004. He says he holds no resentment regarding the slow pace of acceptance of his ideas. “Natural skepticism has helped rather than hurt,” he says. “It has kept us from leaping too fast into underground architecture. It makes people look more closely into claims that at first seemed far-fetched. But some of them aren’t: low heating bills, low cooling bills, low maintenance, quiet and — best of all — the restoration of a green world.”
