THE PLOWBOY INTERVIEW BILL MOLLISON

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The "reactive house" concept is one pattern that can be employed to retrofit older dwellings. The aim of such a design is to reduce — or even eliminate — the need to use external energy for climate control. In this sort of housing, outside windbreak plantings protect the structure from cold winds . . . external walls are covered with insulating vine crops . . . a solar-collecting greenhouse is attached to the sunny side of the building . . . all walls and ceilings are well insulated. . . and so forth.

There are also lots of exciting things being done with underground and earth dwellings. Furthermore — after I finish my tour of the United States — I'm going to visit a West German named Rudolf Doernach, who "grew" his own house: a unique biostructure composed of an igloo-shaped steel-and-timber frame that's grown over with leafy evergreen vines. The building is heated with compost . . . and it keeps the occupants quite warm, even in the cold European winters! "Plant houses" like Doernach's — which literally spring up out of the ground — not only make useful human dwellings but can also provide warm livestock shelters.

PLOWBOY: Bill, so far you've referred to permaculture only as a rurally oriented concept. What relevance — if any — do your ideas have to the millions of people who live in crowded nonagricultural environments?

MOLLISON: I've done quite a lot of design work in inner city areas, believe it or not . . . most often with unemployment coops and community groups. Our cities are really in a crisis situation, because they were set up to exist only as dependents of physically distant food-producing ecologies, and simply can't survive on their own. So we'll have to do a fast job of designing in urban areas if we're going to save the cities.

Actually, though, I find that — more and more — inner cities are becoming surprisingly active agricultural areas. Earlier in this trip, I worked in the Los Angeles suburbs of Lynwood and Watts . . . and what I saw there foreshadows what will be happening all over the world in ten years. Those people are more likely to make an effort to do something about their circumstances, because they have an immediate need . . . the edge of the sword is closer to them. Many inner city residents can't afford petrol or food today — a situation that will become all too common in other areas quite soon — so they're forced to grow their own supplies now. As a result, there are actually more gardens per capita in Lynwood and Watts than in any other part of Los Angeles. It's strange . . . the Third World exists within the frontiers of the Western world, as well as without.

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