((PKG)) SuperAdobe
((Banner: Building Houses and Self))
((Reporter/Camera: Arturo Martinez))
((Map: Hesperia, California))
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
I love coming out of my house now and seeing this thing.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
Here we are, building, and you've come to Cal-Earth to learn how to build and there is a physical aspect to that. We are suddenly here, building a house. Six inches more to the outside.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
I was working in Los Angeles as a musician. Struggling really, and I just had arrived at a point where musically I hit a wall, financially I felt like I hit a wall, and I wanted to try and provide for myself.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
You know, musicians drink, and they don't get much sleep, and they do all kinds of terrible things. So, I had a lifestyle that needed to be modified.
((NATS))
Oh yeah. I didn't have a particularly healthy life and slowly as I moved towards eating whole food and eating healthy food, it doesn't take much of a jump to start to ask: well, what about a healthy house? What about the health of the structure you live in?
I just suddenly stopped renting a house, sold my stuff, got on the phone to Cal-Earth and showed up.
((NATS))
((Dastan Khalili, President of Cal-Earth))
Cal-Earth is the California Institute of Earth, Arts and Architecture. We are a nonprofit foundation and in our nonprofit work, we are an educational institute and also a disaster relief charity. We teach our students, empower our students how to build structures called SuperAdobe. What that means is taking long sandbags and barbed wires and building structures that you see. Now these structures are fireproof, hurricane proof, tornado proof, earthquake resistant. They work in harmony with nature and they have a minimal carbon footprint.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
We have right here, Adobe. We have earth and we can build a house out of earth. You put the earth in the bag and you put the barbed wire on top of it. It's not much to that.
((NATS))
And that's why we can reasonably say to people: hey, come and we'll show you how to build a dome house quickly.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
This is an example of what can be done with sandbags and you pack the soil inside these tubes and then compact it and each layer comes up like so, until you've generated some sort of a structure. Most of these buildings can be built in one day with ten people and you could create these structures. We teach workshops and in a matter of a few days, we have people doing this. So, it really is a very simple method of building.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
So, these are long term apprentices building a dome. Right now, they are laying the foundation layer. It's the part that touches the ground.
((NATS))
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
I love super adobe. I love working with the earth, so that's what I'm doing here.
((Jerry Alan, Cal-Earth student))
I would love to build my own house up in upper Michigan. I think once people see this technology up there, they're gonna want to do workshops, maybe an eco village.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
I've found in architecture what I used to have in music, which is excitement and passion and fun and everything that you hope to have.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
That's eco dome. It's a 400 square foot sort of tiny house concept. We could deliver that, no question, with paid labor for $50,000. But we're not selling anything. We're selling education. We are saying: come, learn yourself, skip the $50,000, pay $10,000 for the material input and figure out how to build it. There's a solution there. It's to do with people power and cooperating and forming relationships with people.
((NATS))
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Hopefully, we will be finishing the dome that's behind me next week. It's been moving a little slow and we've definitely had to correct ourselves quite a few times but it's all part of learning.
((NATS))
((Jerry Alan, Cal-Earth student))
We are getting close though.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal Earth Institute))
We are going to do this. You are getting really close to the top. This is the coda to our work.
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
I'm excited to be closing it.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
That's it.
((NATS))
((Jerry Alan, Cal-Earth student))
I thought it was going to be a lot easier but there's a lot of things that can go wrong.
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
This is a small scale so we were really excited to actually build like an actual official dome.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
If they can do this, as they've demonstrated in the last three weeks, then they become part of a team of people who, today, can build houses out of sand bags. So for us, that's just a win. It means we've got five more people in this army that we're educating and moving forward. So, I mean, I feel fantastic.
((NATS))
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Hi. I'm Michelle. Nice to meet you.
((Bob Lien, Builder of SuperAdobe house))
Where are you from, Michelle?
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Lake Arrowhead.
((Bob Lien, Builder of SuperAdobe house))
Oh wow. Cool.
((Michelle, Cal-Earth student))
Not too far. Thanks for having us here.
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
This is not new. Right now, as we speak, as you're filming this, I know for a fact because I've looked into this, half of the world lives in adobe houses.
((NATS))
((Bob Lien, Builder of SuperAdobe house))
We started this myself and two of my older kids. We started in 2006 and we moved in in May of 2010. So, I call it almost four years, really.
((NATS))
((Ian Lodge, Site Director, Cal-Earth Institute))
This super adobe system is able to advance a very significantly ecological model of housing. That's the right thing for this time in human history.
((NATS))
