The Integral Urban House

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For all the current talk about getting "back to the land" and becoming self-sufficient, darn few folks have taken the lead in showing urban residents—apartment dwellers and city homeowners—how they too can enjoy a more self-reliant way of life. One organization that is doing encouraging work in this area is the Farallones Institute of Berkeley, California. Here's a report on just one of the Institute's project: the conversion of a Victorian mansion into an urban homestead!

By Julie Reynolds

Away out here in Berkeley, California—in an aging semi-industrial neighborhood—an enthusiastic group of "doers" has come together to restore (and display to the public) a 100-year-old Victorian house. What's so unusual about that? Nothing . . . except that the stately dwelling—now known as the Integral Urban House—has become one of the country's most innovative and successful "urban homesteads".

Half a dozen IUH residents grow their own fruits and vegetables, raise chickens, rabbits, and fish, recycle 90% of their wastes, solar heat their hot water, and conduct a variety of alternative technology experiments . . . all on a 1/8-acre city lot!

"The Integral Urban House exists," explains house resident Charles O'Loughlin, "to serve as a model for a more ecologically sound urban habitat, and to provide urban dwellers with physical and conceptual tools for creating a more self-reliant lifestyle." In other words, the IUH staffers want to show by example how city folk can "live better for less" . . . while doing a good deed for the planet at the same time.

A MINI-ECOSYSTEM

The Integral Urban House is a project of the Farallones Institute, a non-profit organization founded in 1969 by a group of northern Californians interested in low-impact, non-resource-intensive living . . . among them Sim van der Ryn (now the official California State Architect) and Bill and Helga Olkowski (authors of Rodale Press's City People's Book of Raising Food).

The Institute's members bought their two-story Victorian building in 1974 and remodeled it inside and out during the following year. Now the structure is no longer just a house but the nucleus of a mini-ecosystem in which rabbits, chickens, fish, honeybees, plants, microbes, and people interact in a flourishing example of interrelated self-reliance.

As it happens, the IUH is not only a small ecosystem but an educational exhibit for the dozens of interested spectators who visit the house every week. (Folks who stop by during "open house"—1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays—can enjoy an intensive 45-minute tour conducted by Charles O'Loughlin, Tanya Drlik, or Tom Javits. Or, if they prefer, visitors can simply browse among the house's books and inspect various displays while their children play with the bunnies out back.)

"Most environmental 'education' consists of an afternoon at the zoo or a wildflower walk," remarks house manager Tom Javits. "Here, environmental education is geared toward getting people to apply sound ecological concepts to their own lives."