There are limits to human health. We can't trust technology to solve all our problems for us. What're we going to do the next time a corona virus comes? Hunker in miserable pods while fearing for our lives and livelihoods? Let's start building environments that makes us stronger.
We can do this. @1000yearhouse will teach you how to build a house that will last 1000 years, in brick made from the earth it stands on and timber from the woods that protect it.
And @CharlestonArchi and @ErikBootsma will teach you how to make it so beautiful your descendants will utter your name with gratitude and respect.
And @masterthatcher2 and @TheMasterThatch will teach you how to make rural roofs that can be grown in your backyard and composted when having reached the end of their lives. No toxins, no factories, no transport needed.
People like @copseworker, @PeterWohlleben and @JLewisStempel will teach you how to live from what the forest and field can give you, sustainably, rather than the abuse we are offering them today.
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Earthen plaster is modernity proof. The techniques, the tools, and the materials, all have remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. From hillside and field to wall and castle, and eventually return to the same soil it came from. Only the human hand is needed.
The material breathes, won't trap moisture (the bane of modern construction materials), itself toxin free it will even help clean the indoor air of your home.
The ingredients are virtually free, available in every climate on Earth: sand, straw, soil, water.
I went to forage wakame (a highly nutritious edible sea weed) at the beach this morning. The part near the roots is a special delicacy only available/edible around this time of the year, called mekabu (メカブ) At home I rinsed the whole seaweed thoroughly and cut off the mekabu.
The mekabu is absolutely slippery, but you'd better cut the fleshy leafy parts off from the thicker stem. Put in boiling water for 20 seconds, remove and put in cold water to cool off. Nice green color just after boiling but before cooling.
Finally, chop it as finely as you can (still slippery), soak in something like soy sauce or vinegar or ponzu (I was lazy/hungry so I used ponzu), garnish with a little pickled plum purée and sesame seeds. Voila. Seasonal food for free. Takes less than 5 minutes.
“The irony of this new discovery is that for hundreds of years educators did seem to sense that children’s brains had to be built up through exercises of increasing difficulty that strengthened brain functions.” — Norman Doidge, M.D., The Brain That Changes Itself, 2007
Personal anecdote time: It was a long time ago but I still remember my first week in school with a completely new subject: English. Our teacher was a young woman who looked a bit like Amelie (in that famous movie), but completely unsmiling, hard as a rock. Our first task was...
...to memorize an old poem of twelve lines, in complicated English, with perfect diction and perfect pronunciation. She would allow no-one the slightest hesitation, the slightest mistake. We had to speak with a native level proficiency from day one before we had even basic vocab.
The vernacular architecture of the Hausa people (mainly in Nigeria & Niger), called tubali, have an interesting detail always at the front of homes and houses: the dakali, a sort of public bench where visitors can gather and the men of the home can sit keep an eye on the street.
You find these built in benches in many instances of traditional or classical architecture all over the world, from Europe to Asia and Africa, the Americas. Here is an interesting Patrician example from Italy:
Back to the Hausa however, these days the dakali are rapidly becoming extinct as Hausa prefer to live in more western styled homes: instead of the semi-public informal gathering in front of the home, you get teh private living room and TV treatment.
Whenever I talk about how much space our cities dedicate to parking I get upset replies and DMs. People usually have no idea how much space parking uses. Here's downtown Montpelier state capital of Vermont, with a bit over average surface parking for a North American city: 65%!
What went through their heads when they decided that using 65% of downtown for daytime car storage was a sensible use of resources? Imagine how much land all the other car infrastructure occupies, and how much of the budget is spent on maintaining it! The lives wasted commuting!
Montpelier could just give the parking lots away to the commuters (about 14,000) and ask them to build charming little townhouses, walkable streets, shops and courtyards and pocket parks, and finance it by the budget savings on infrastructure spending alone. With room to spare!
The famous Harmonica Yokocho in Tokyo's Kichijo neighborhood is an interesting study in bottom-up urbanism. On an area of 30,829 ft² or 2,864 m² there are exactly 100 stores, shops, restaurants, and bars, providing the livelihoods of between one and three hundred people. How? -->
In 1944 the area around Kichijoji station was cleared of buildings to protect it from bombing damage. The open ground was quickly turned into an open air black market where local children would ride the trains into undamaged rural areas and buy food from farmers to sell.
The black markets existed around every train station for years after the war ended. In 1958 the local vendors heard rumors of a development on their traditional patch of land. A plan was formed: large quantities of corrugated iron, mortar, tinder blocks and lumber was purchased.