Great story by SanPedroScoop on an amazing building beside Lubaantun Maya site in Southern Belize….

What a fun construction job that must have been!!!

Ummm. Earthship Belize. And the view of an odd adobe-like structure behind some brush. What the heck is that? There is a sign…it must be open to the public. Maybe. Surely there could not be attack dogs. There is a sign!

What I found was…well…shocking. Or at the very least very VERY surprising and actually really beautiful. An “Earthship” made of trash and cement that almost looks like a Moorish temple or a home in Morocco or Turkey. Unique for sure. Here’s the Earthship just feet away from Lubaantun, the 1400 or so year old Maya site.

The entire base is stacked tires stuffed with styrofoam and crushed cans. It’s AMAZING. Here are some pictures from 2012 and a brief article about this Earthship and its builders. They are a type of home that was “invented” in the 1970s in the US…homes that collect water, use the sun, are built of trash and recyclables and as self sufficiently as possible.

I was just struck by the beauty of this building, the artistry and the sheer amount of hands’ on effort it is taking this family and a small group of workers to plan and build it.

DO Click here to read the rest of the article and see LOTS more AWESOME photos on San Pedro Scoop

Is Michael Reynolds still here?

Oh so Gaudiesque and fabulous.
It's really fun to explore the earthship website. Had no idea the bottles were so labour intensive though - that's wild!
As an aside - and about bottles as building materials - I read an article about a house-building project in Nigeria. Plastic soda-bottles were collected and filled with sand. These bottles were used like bricks with mortar to make the house walls. Bottle-caps were exposed for their color, etc. The houses looked very funky-cool and the added benefit, which apparently is helpful in Nigeria (?!) - the house is bullet-proof.