Tell-A-Vision

Once while walking along the beach, the sight of tide pools and mussel encrusted rocks brought a woman I know to tears. She hadn’t grown up by the ocean, so she looked upon the sight as an epiphany and raved through her tears of a rock teaming with life and the iridescence reflected in the sunlight.

That was far more magical than the mundane glimpse of a barnacle covered rock so common to us who walk along the beach here in Encinitas. Or maybe it is simply perspective.


If one looks closely at the barnacles that cover a rock there is an abode quality to the crusty nuggets that house the inner workings. The barnacle is a natural survivor acclimated to harsh living situations not even considered by others in the sea world (land or air) or resilience in action. This domed colony or clumping design shows great economy and minimalism in resource use. It is reminiscent of the earthbag structures.

Earthbag building fills a unique niche in the quest for sustainable architecture. The bags can be filled with local, natural materials, which lowers the embodied energy commonly associated with the manufacture and transportation of building materials. The fill material is generally of mineral composition and is not subject to decomposition (even when damp), attractive to vermin, or burnable...in other word it is extremely durable.

The fill material is generally completely non-toxic and will not offgas noxious fumes into the building. Earthbags have the tremendous advantage of providing either thermal mass or insulation, depending on what the bags are filled with. When filled with soil they provide thermal mass, but when filled with lighter weight materials, such as crushed volcanic stone, perlite, vermiculite, or rice hulls, they provide insulation. The bags can even act as natural non-wicking, somewhat insulated foundations when they are filled with gravel. Vision of an alternative housing and more

With that as basic structure cell for background, this vision really begins right here.

Take a look at the monstrously underutilized, ignored and ugly view of the corporate chains, the consumer structures typically massed along El Camino Real. Besides the valuable land massively being given away to vehicle storage, the rooftops are a giant waste of square footage.

Remember, our city government bends over backwards for commercial interests in the name of tax revenues and in the name of the economy. Remember too the secretive meetings to usher Walmart into our community through the back door last year? What is seldom calculated are what these enterprises with the consumer-friendly low prices actually cost our community. By no means a complete essay, this is to convey a vision that has the potential to addresses a whole bunch of problems, many if not all invisible to most and clearly invisible to all of the city council majority and current city planning staff with the growth at all costs mindset.

Externalized Costs of Commercial Use

The kind of employment in these sprawling concrete boxes is minimum wage workers and managers, who very often don’t live in Encinitas because they can’t afford to live in Encinitas. they are the working poor all around us. This means most all the workforce have vehicles being stored along with the shoppers in this sea of asphalt.

As an aside, the electrical loads from refrigeration in the grocery stores, fast food restaurants and drug stores and air conditioning in all of these retail outlets doubtless dwarfs residential use.

In other words, our corporate stakeholders can be brought into the process of addressing a critical need in Encinitas; that is, low income housing for their own work force and deficits caused largely by their commercial operations. Ideally, the vision would retain all of the commercial advantages that New Encinitas residents in particular have been shoved into thinking will evaporate with any affordable housing options along El Camino Real.

And, through creative visioning, a bonus would be to help mitigate the externalized costs of the low prices regarding cheap labor, excessive fossil fuel use for workforce, high packaging waste, high use cheap energy costs, loss of valuable land through vehicle storage and possibly a whole lot more.

Greenroofs and more

Not shown here would be steel structure to create 1 level above these commercial building with a 9’ gap between the top of the building and the housing zone to accommodate engineering, maintenance zone, some parking (largely bikes) and storage pods for tenants. Also not shown in these images gathered on the web are the potential PV solar arrays or wind energy generators. But the feel is that of a natural setting with a deep layer of soil part of this design vision for a greenroof along with the housing pods. Greywater systems from showers, compost stations supplied with resident and grocery food waste are part of this green / garden zone with an orchard at its center. Berms and swales will create opportunities in the habitat variation in dwelling heights (opening up varied views at level and from below) as well as habitat opportunities for birds and critters.

What this vision embodies is an organic village above the commercial zone with small, efficient structures to house singles or families, depending on the choices of single or primary with add-ons in the basic housing unit.  The luminous shades of the iridescent mussels in the opening paragraph could be used throughout.  What costs are necessary in the second and mid-stories would be comparable to conventional building. The vastly less expensive small homes with tiny energy footprints lend credibility to proposing this as an experimental plan. The study was started in an agricultural setting to test the model of this eco-village, the authors wrote:

A way to begin, testing – On agricultural lands, city owned open lands a phase 1 experimental eco-construction as a study for local education and code re-adjustment studies would be built before moving to phase 2. “Pod one is designed to consist of thirty-two 200 square foot semi-subterranean “dry pod” earthbag hotel room styled cabanas placed in a circle with thirty-two separate 200 square foot “wet pod” bathrooms forming a second inner-circle. Like a hotel, the dry pods will consist of a bed, a closet, and a small sitting area and desk. The wet pods will be a solar heated passive shower, sink, passive toilet, and walk-in closet/storage. Additional storage will be available between the two Pods with a small patio and additional sitting area.

Why we chose this size and earthbag design: The 200 square foot size, and elimination of hard plumbing (no septic tank; rather composting toilets, recycling of all water) allows us (and people in most US counties) to classify these structures as agricultural buildings that we can start building week one without the permits we will be immediately applying for to build Pod 2. We will still be working with the county on this Pod with a full disclosure of what we are creating and why but THEIR hands won’t be tied by existing regulations and rules so we can all move forward faster. We chose earthbag construction and this design as our first pod because they can be built for under $500 for each structure, are easy to construct with very little training or experience, and will be easier than ever to duplicate anywhere in the world as we achieve our open source goals.”

For less than $40,000 our city staff could work with unskilled labor, local dirt (that’s lifeless soil and widely available), a cadre of local expertise to come up with a kind of living lab for another fee to address ecology and economy in the commercial zones of Encinitas to capture the invisible opportunities for housing the largely invisible people who are low income workers. And El Camino Real might be only a start.

Billboard Graphic Earthbag

For the commercially obsessed there is a variation on this where the earthbags are made from old billboard vinyl. They still get their workforce nearly captive above the stores. And those curmudgeons who see labor only in punitive terms might suggest filling these billboard tubes with all the toxic dirt throughout the nursery zone in Encinitas. Worker housing as punishment? Ugh, forget that. Sometimes the hate talk bubbles up in the mind, even in the middle of some healthy imaginings. In truth this was a design concept winner (without any ill intent) from environmental graphics professionals in a challenge, to offer brilliantly intriguing images if nothing else.

Several hours of creative envisioning and musing - amusement? It beat the hell out of the television machine.