Passive Solar Design with David Wright

By Travis Brock
Published on September 1, 1977
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Passive solar designed home 2.
Passive solar designed home 2.
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Passive solar designed home 1.
Passive solar designed home 1.
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Plowboy Interview, photo of David Wright, passive solar designer.
Plowboy Interview, photo of David Wright, passive solar designer.
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Passive solar designed home 3.
Passive solar designed home 3.
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Diagram: Passive solar designed homes.
Diagram: Passive solar designed homes.

The Plowboy Interview talks with David Wright, passive solar design expert.

“Use native materials, build your house like a thermos bottle, then aim that thermos bottle south and put a cork in it,” says architect David Wright. Result: ancient/futuristic structures, that blend into their landscapes and — at almost no cost — naturally heat them selves in the winter and cool themselves during the summer.

There’s a new breed of architect stirring in the land, a breed that you should get to know. Because it has The Secret . . . The Secret that can free you from the utility companies and so many of the other entities in our corporate society that demandand gettheir daily ransom, their daily pound of flesh, from you.

Think of a world of beauty and freedom. A world in which all the buildings nestle into the landscape as naturally as if they’d always been there. A world in which your house is built almost entirely of earth and stone and timber and costs you as little as $.9.00 a square foot. A world in which that house — once completed — keeps you and your family warm and snug and dry and comfortable for the rest of your lives . . . while never costing you a penny for electricity, or oil, or any other form of commercially available energy.

Farfetched? Not at all. Because there is a whole new mutant spore of architects springing up among us. Architects who are, in many ways, actually throwbacks to our wisest and most nature-oriented ancestors. And those architects have already started to create the world of beauty and freedom which we’ve just glimpsed.

David Wright is one of those new passive solar designers.

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