Design For Limited Planet Living With Natural Energy

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"In the next ten years the architectural landscape of this country will change radically."

Environmental architect David Wright developed a simple way to heat a house by the sun that has worked in different regions and different climates. A Berkeley-educated ex-Peace Corps member, Wright was one of the original members of Sun Mountain Design, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a non-profit group of engineers, builders, and architects involved in solar-tempered design. They approached land use, development, design, and research synergistically, learning from their various disciplines. David, like the others, prefers non-mechanical sun-heated houses to those with complicated systems involving collectors, storage, and circulation systems.

His own house on the outskirts of Santa Fe, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, is a prototype of the non. mechanical structures he advocates. The only visible hardware is a small separate solar collector that stands several yards from the house on the south slope and supplies the house with hot water.

In appearance, the house blends harmoniously with the native New Mexican architecture. It uses adobe brick, and the roof overhang echoes the traditional vigas , or roof beams, that extend out through the walls of old adobe houses. Its inspiration goes even farther back—to the twelfth-century pueblo dwellings at Chaco Canyon, considered by many to be America's first solar-heated habitations on a grand scale. At Chaco Canyon, the multifamily structures that were archetypal apartment buildings to house a whole community were built in an arc. The windows and doorways faced south, into the sun, while the backs of the pueblos were shielded by the hillside, giving them protection from northern winds.

The Wright house reflects that same design. From a bird's-eye view, it is shaped like a semicircle with a flat front. The curved walls are 14-inch-thick adobe brick with 2 more inches of polyurethane insulation covered by a thick layer of stucco. The flat front, facing south, is a two-story-high window wall made up of double-glazed sliding doors. An overhang shields the windows from the hottest summer sun. In contrast to the front, the three remaining sides of the house are surrounded by an earth bank and broken only by a few small windows set high up to act as vents. On the east, the main entry door is protected by a vestibule that creates an air trap so warm house air can't escape each time the door is opened.

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