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Building Treeless Houses
A Trees and Us podcast with 'Garbage Warriors' director Oliver Hodge.
Doc director OIiver Hodge
Trees and Us
- Trees and Us
- Why Humans and Nature Collide
- Why Rocket Science Is Easier than Forestry
- Tree Love and Murder
- Building Treeless Houses
- BC's Vanishing Timber Worker
- BC's Eco-Activist 'Rock Star'
- Green Is The New Black
- A Certified Forest Saviour
- Beyond 'Molly's Reach'
- Simpson Chops Coleman
- Velcrow Ripper's 'Fierce Light'
- Reviving Forest Protests in BC
- Leiren-Young and His 'Green Chain'
- Betty Krawczyk, Proud Fanatic
- How Adbusters Grew on Trees
- He Sees Our Hot Future
- 'Wild Foresting'
- Ken Wu Wants to Save 'the Avatar Grove'
- Patrick Moore, Proud Heretic
Imagine building your house out of garbage.
American architect Michael Reynolds turns old tires, beer cans and plastic bottles into "earthships."
Oliver Hodge was a movie props maker who helped design and create the stuff you find on spaceships -- including the light sabers for The Phantom Menace. But Hodge left the Oompa Loompas at Charlie's Chocolate Factory and suspended his license to create killer weapons for James Bond to chronicle Reynold's adventures for his first feature film, Garbage Warrior.
Hodge spent three years following Reynolds as he fought to change the laws in New Mexico to create a self-sustaining community and flew into disaster areas to build -- and teach locals to build -- homes that require no heating, no outside sewage or water systems and redefine the meaning and possibilities of "living off the grid."
Garbage Warrior just finished a run at the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival where it won the inaugural People's Choice Award for the Most Popular International Nonfiction Film. Last week Hodge won the award for Best Debut Director at the British Independent Film Awards. And Dorothy Woodend at The Tyee wrote, "This is perhaps my favorite film in the entire festival, simply because it says, "You want to do something? Okay, do this!""
In the latest "Trees and Us" podcast, Mark Leiren-Young talks trash with Hodge as he explains how to build houses without trees.
Click the Listen to this! to hear Oliver Hodge talk about recycled houses, the stories the movie doesn't tell about visiting the Andaman Islands after a tsunami and making the ultimate light sabre.
Or listen and subscribe to Tyee podcasts on iTunes.
Related Tyee stories:
- Tree Love and Murder
A Trees and Us podcast with George Bowering. - Why Rocket Science Is Easier than Forestry
A 'Trees and Us' Tyee podcast with Jean-Pierre Kiekens. - Why Humans and Nature Collide
A 'Trees and Us' Tyee podcast with John Vaillant. - Trees and Us
Our new podcast series asks: what does the forest mean to you? First up, Severn Cullis-Suzuki.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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1
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SharingIsGood
4 years ago
thanks, Mark, this was worth my time
Thanks Mark Leiren-Young,
I think you have probably had many readers - but no commentors about your article because there is nothing wrong with it. It was good information and it was good fun to watch the Garbage Warrier mini-clip. I am now going to listen to the interview with Oliver Hodge; and, judging from the body of work you have been building, I will most likely not be back to complain about anything.
The interview was better than I had expected. It was inspiring.
A former builder returning to my roots, I am in the planning process of a 1400 sq. ft. ecofriendly, nearly-off-the-grid, home. However, I am in love with the old achitecture that exists in my future surroundings. I won't be designing something that devalues the asthetics that my new neighbours and their families have been building for hundreds of years. It would be upsetting for this old community. Much of my exterior line and interior form are going to have to conform to the past - hybrid tibre-frame will be used. I am going to keep 14 of 18 acres in forest. Actually, the land contains about 13 acres of forest, at present; I plan to return one acre to forest to make up for wood I use in my constructions. I plan to document and photograph all phases of my work and open the finished home to the public a few days a year - and possibly some school field trips, etc. The house must function to support life and breathe as though alive; and it must be constructed of eco-friendly materials, with a design life of as long as I can make it - 1000 years would be great!
I am open to ideas I have not yet considered in terms of insulation, heat sources and sinks, heat pumps, composting sewage, low speed submersed water driven generators etc. Any places you can point me would be greatly appreciated. I continually research in my spare time; but I am still weak on some mechanical engineering: refrigeration, thermo and fluid dynamics - though I am certainly capable of learning and thinking in calculus and differential equations, it may be more prudent to follow some numbers someone else has already crunched.
You are doing good work, and I will read every article I see with your name attached.