Council House
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Council House is the my second attempt to design an Earth house that is more aesthetic and more functional that Michael Reynolds' Earthship model. It is similar in style to the Hug House design, but it is 2 stories high, not 1; it sleeps 10 people, not 8; each room has a window that gives it at least 60 degrees on sunlight, and a window that looks into the common room; and it features a working hypocaust -- the antecedent to modern-day radiant floor heating.
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Like the Hug House, each of the 5 bedrooms has curving hallways that lead up to it, affording it privacy while allowing for the free flow of positive energy; but in Council House, these hallways are stairways, leading either half a flight down or half a flight up. The design allows for enough space for these stairways to be built as ramps, instead, so that the Council House can be wheelchair accessible, even though it is multi-storey.
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Again, the Council House features a large communal room 4 times the size of an individual bedroom, to stress the importance of community. And again, the entrances to the bedrooms run off of hallways that lead from the communal room, not from the communal room itself, giving the residents of Council House as added measure of privacy. But this time, all of the bedrooms also feature a peephole that faces into the communal room, so that the "councilors" came take part in imprompto discussions and debates.
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The bedrooms are offset from the communal room by a half-storey: bedrooms A & E are half a storey lower than the communal room, and bedrooms B, C, & D are half a storey higher than the communal room. The windows into the communal room from bedrooms A & E are at shoulder level, so counselors A & E would cross their arms and comfortably lean onto their window sills to engage with the communal room; the windows from bedrooms B, C, & D are at knee-level, so counselors B, C, & D would sit on the ground floor of their rooms and allow their feet to dangle out their windows to engage with the communal room.
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Upper Floor
Lower Floor
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Underneath the rooms of the main floor (the communal room, the bath, and the toilet) lies a hypocaust. This ancient form of radiant floor heating was used by Romans, Chinese, and Koreans in pre-modern times, and can be built without much difficulty by semi-professional labourers. Essentially, hot air from the furnace is forced to pass through vents that criss-cross underneath the floor of the main level of the house before it is allowed to exit, thereby heating the rooms from below in a most efficient manner. The first room that the hot air passes under is the bath Ð the room that needs to be the warmest!
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In the Council House, the toilet is not facing South, so it cannot take advantage of passive solar energy to make proper compost. But since there is already a sub-floor beneath the main floor, it can also be used to house a large container for refuse from a regular compost toilet, where it can compost over time even without high temperatures from direct solar radiation. It is also aided by the still-hot air from the hypocaust that is about to exit the house.
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Hypocaust
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You might point out that according to the Council House design, Bedroom C would not receive any direct sunlight, contrary to the most important principle of Earthship design, since it lies behind the communal room. But remember, like bedrooms B & D, it is a half-storey higher than the communal room on the main floor, so it does bask in direct sunlight, despite the fact that in plan, it looks as if it is "behind" the communal room. And Bedrooms B & D, which block the peripheral sunlight Bedroom C receives, are receded from the South face of the house, permitting 60 degrees of sunlight to reach Bedroom C, which then equals the same amount of sunlight that the receded lower-floor bedrooms A & E receive.
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I hope that one day soon we will have the opportunity to try out some of these design ideas and build a Council House from earth, by hand. And I hope that you will become part of the design process by giving me feedback on the design, and share with me some of your own ideas on how to make shelter more ecological, socialist, and anarchist.
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