History
In the 1970s, a group of activists and engineers calling themselves the New Alchemists believed the warnings of imminent resource depletion and starvation. The New Alchemists were famous for the depth of research effort placed in their projects. Using conventional construction techniques, they designed a series of "bioshelter" projects, the most famous of which was the Ark Bioshelter community for Prince Edward Island. They published the plans for all of these, with detailed design calculations and blueprints. The Ark used wind based water pumping and electricity, and was self-contained in food production. It had living quarters for people, fish tanks raising Tilapia for protein, a greenhouse watered with fish water and a closed loop sewage reclamation system that recycled human waste into sanitized fertilizer for the fish tanks. As of 2010-01-10, the successor organization to the New Alchemists has a web page up as the "New Alchemy Institute". The PEI Ark has been abandoned and partially renovated several times.
The 1990s saw the development of Earthships, similar in intent to the Ark project, but organized as a for-profit venture, with construction details published in a series of 3 books by Mike Reynolds. The building material is tires filled with earth. This makes a wall that has large amounts of thermal mass (see earth sheltering). Berms are placed on exposed surfaces to further increase the house's temperature stability. The water system starts with rain water, processed for drinking, then washing, then plant watering, then toilet flushing, and finally black water is recycled again for more plant watering. The cisterns are placed and used as thermal masses. Power, including electricity, heat and water heating, is from solar power.
1990s architects such as William McDonough and Ken Yeang applied environmentally responsible building design to large commercial buildings, such as office buildings, making them largely self-sufficient in energy production. One major bank building (ING's Amsterdam headquarters) in the Netherlands was constructed to be autonomous and artistic as well.
Read more about this topic: Autonomous Building
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“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)