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Earth Sheltering
An earth shelter, also called an earth house, earth-bermed house, earth-sheltered house, earth-covered house, or underground house, is a structure (usually a house) with earth (soil) against the walls and/or on the roof, or that is entirely buried underground. Earth acts as thermal mass, making it easier to maintain a steady indoor air temperature and therefore reduces energy costs for heating or cooling. Earth sheltering became relatively popular after the mid-1970s, especially among environmentalists. However, the practice has been around for nearly as long as humans have been constructing their own shelters. Definition * "Earth-sheltering is ../nowiki> a generic term with the general meaning: building design in which soil plays an integral part." [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesa Verde
Mesa Verde National Park is a national park of the United States and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, and the only World Heritage Site in Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan ancestral sites in the United States. Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table", or more specifically "green table mountain") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings in North America. Starting BC Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dietikon
Dietikon is the fifth biggest city of the canton of Zürich in Switzerland, after Zürich, Winterthur, Uster and Dübendorf. It is the capital of the same-named district of Dietikon and part of the Zürich metropolitan area. Geography The industrial city Dietikon is situated at an elevation of at the confluence of the Reppisch and the Limmat, located in the Limmat Valley (German: ''Limmattal''), along the railway line from Zürich to Baden. Here and in the neighboring region, Spreitenbach, is also the large Limmattal rail freight marshalling yard. Dietikon has an area of . Of this area, 17.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while 27% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 49.1% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (6.7%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains). housing and buildings made up 33.8% of the total area, while transportation infrastructure made up the rest (15.3%). Of the total unproductive area, water (streams and lakes) made up 4 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Kern
Ken Kern was a builder and author who devoted himself to aiding owner-builders, and believed strongly in living on the land. He lived outside of North Fork, California at the time of his death and lived for many years on a self-built homestead outside Oakhurst, California Despite being an experienced builder and proponent of earth sheltering An earth shelter, also called an earth house, earth-bermed house, earth-sheltered house, earth-covered house, or underground house, is a structure (usually a house) with earth (soil) against the walls and/or on the roof, or that is entirely burie ..., Kern was killed when an earth roof he designed collapsed on him. Written works Writings by Kern include: * ''The Owner-Built Home'' * ''The Owner-Built Homestead'' * ''The Owner-Built Pole Frame House'' * ''The Earth Sheltered Owner-Built Home'' * ''The Owner Builder & the Code: Politics of Building'' * ''The Work Book: Personal Politics of Building Your Home'' * ''The Healthy House: An Owner ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Vetsch
Peter Vetsch (born 14 March 1943) is a Swiss people, Swiss architect, known for building earth houses. Life Vetsch was born 1943 in Sax, Switzerland. He attended public school in Sax from 1950 to 1956. He then attended an agricultural school in Cernier until 1962, where he graduated. Afterwards he was an apprentice in structural design in Winterthur and worked for an architecture office in St. Gallen. In the following years, Vetsch attended the academy of arts in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he graduated in 1970. After his diploma he worked for architecture offices in Germany and Switzerland. Occupational activity Peter Vetsch has run his own architecture office in Dietikon, Switzerland since 1978. Vetsch has built over 47 earth houses in Switzerland and around the world, and also a number of conventional houses. Vetsch’s Earth houses represent his conception of an environmentally conscious, ecological and progressive architecture. Using sprayed concrete construction, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Wells
Malcolm Wells (March 11, 1926 – November 27, 2009) was an American architect who is regarded as "the father of modern earth-sheltered architecture." Wells lived on Cape Cod, Massachusetts in a modern earth-sheltered building of his own design. Wells was also a writer, illustrator, draftsman, lecturer, cartoonist, columnist, and solar energy consultant. Wells retired from architecture in June 2004, but continued his advocacy for underground living to the end of his life. Wells' work in architecture and design began in 1953. After 10 years "spent spreading corporate asphalt on America in the name of architecture," he began to feel that the Earth's surface was "made for living plants, not industrial plants;" and went into underground architecture. This was reflected in his semi-underground offices at the corner of East Cuthbert Blvd and North Park Drive and at 6 Dale Avenue in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, adjacent to the Cooper River. His interests were in energy efficiency, aesthet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Oehler
David Michael Oehler (; January 2, 1938 February 2, 2016) was an American environmentalist and author. He was a proponent and designer of affordable and sustainable alternative forms of housing. He became well known for his appearance in episodes of the Louis Theroux BBC documentary series '' Weird Weekends'' (1998). Early life David Michael Oehler was born in Chicago on January 2, 1938, the son of Polly and Chet Oehler. He grew up in nearby Wilmette and had three sisters named Patricia, Gretchen, and Sioux. He graduated from New Trier High School but dropped out of college to pursue his writing career, then served in the U.S. Army before working on fishing boats. He then worked in gold mines in Alaska, joined the U.S. Forest Service, cruised around Mexico, and finally ended up in San Francisco, where he embraced the hippy movement and lifestyle. Career Oehler partook in the 1960s back-to-the-land movement. He lived on a 40-acre homestead in the Idaho mountains. He wrote numer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Sir Hugh Beaver created the concept, and twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter co-founded the book in London in August 1955. The first edition topped the bestseller list in the United Kingdom by Christmas 1955. The following year the book was launched internationally, and as of the 2025 edition, it is now in its 70th year of publication, published in 100 countries and 40 languages, and maintains over 53,000 records in its database. The international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in ''Guinness World Records'' becoming the primary international source for cata ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underhill, Holme
Underhill at Holme, West Yorkshire, England, is a modern house designed by Arthur Quarmby in 1969 and built from 1973 to 1975. Underhill has been Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England since July 2017. Underhill was the first earth-sheltered house to have been built in Britain in modern times. Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ... described Underhill as "representing a significant milestone in the development of ecological and sustainable architecture". It was built at a cost of £50,000 and was constructed by J. B. Kenworthy of Holmfirth. The house features a hourglass-shaped swimming pool centrally located in the main room, with a large octagonal pyramid conservatory-style skylight window in the ceiling above the centre o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Back-to-the-land Movement
A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarianism, agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life. There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as reform movement, social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts. Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatism, separatists. The concept was popularized in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century by activist Bolton Hall (activist), Bolton Hall, who set up urban agriculture, vacant lot farming in New York City and wrote many books on the subject; [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1973 Oil Crisis
In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against countries that had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began after Egypt and Syria launched a large-scale surprise attack in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the territories that they had lost to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. In an effort that was led by Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the initial countries that OAPEC targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list was later expanded to include Estado Novo (Portugal), Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa. In March 1974, OAPEC lifted the embargo, but the price of oil had risen by nearly 300%: from US to nearly US globally. Prices in the United States were significantly higher than the global average. After it was implemented, the embargo caused an oil crisis, or "shock", with many short- and long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Plains
The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include the mixed grass prairie, the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains Ecozone, Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains Ecozone, Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada. "Great Plains", or Western Plains, is also the ecoregion of the Great Plains or the western portion of the Great Plains, some of which in the farthest west is known as the High Plains. The Great Plains lie across both the Central United States and Western Canada, encompassing: *Most or all of the U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska, and North Dakota, North and South Dakota; *Eastern parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming; *Parts of the U.S. states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas; *Sometimes western parts of Iowa, Minnesot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
