Architectural Lessons from the 60s Counterculture
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 04.23.08
The Om Dome
Alastair Gordon writes a wonderful article in Architectural Record, suggesting that it is a good time to look back at the seeds of green architecture, the Drop Cities, geodesic domes, Arcosanti and other strange and spaced-out shelters.
"It was just there, somehow, in the air, the back-to-nature vibe, the need to make shelter, the need to uncomplicate one’s life. There was scrounging and recycling of old materials, living off the spoils of straight society. “Trapped inside a waste economy, man finds an identity as a consumer,” wrote Bill Voyd. “Once outside the trap, he finds enormous resources at his disposal—free.” Voyd and other pioneers at Drop City learned to chop the metal tops out of junked cars and shape them into building panels. Other free-form builders learned to work with bottles, mounds of earth, mud bricks, old tires, and bales of hay."
A 1967 dome at Drop City is among the first solar-panel-heated homes. Photo by Clarke Richert.
He concludes with a point that is relevant to the entire green movement, not just architecture and design.
"Notions of sustainability, ephemeralization, simplifying life, and reducing our carbon footprint have come full circle and seem more urgent today than ever before. But while the shaggy ’60s may be up for review, they come with a haircut, shorn as they are of the social/cultural revolution that drove them. And the question remains, can you have one without the other? True sustainability without sweeping social change? True green without revolution? Consumers beware: When one hears companies like Exxon, General Motors, and Merck Chemical talking green, then you know it’s probably time to check in with Alice and slide back down the rabbit hole." ::Architectural Record
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Where's my tee-pee?
What's old is new again.
As for the question - will it make you feel any better to remember how you sold out? People doing the work have no time for poser questions.
Exactly! A hybrid SUV is still a gas-wasting behemoth, and a CFL still wastes energy if used stupidly. There needs to be a social change as much as there needs to be a technological one. We cannot afford to not care anymore. We cannot afford to be ignorant and to be thoughtless.
I've always loved those geodome homes. I remember hiking with my Dad in the Oregon woods and we stumbled on one Geodome home and I told him I wanted to live in one.
I HATE ordinary suburban homes, and at the time our family lived in just that, and my father was quite offended at my taste and called me a "hippy" in a very mean way.
Now I live in an old Sears kit home and I have vowed NEVER to live in an ordinary McMansion! I love geodome homes, I would live in one in an heartbeat, if I could find one where I live.
I've been a Buckminster Fuller fan for years and I have always thought his ideas---and other revolutionaries of that time---should be reexamined for validity and possibility in today's society.
I've been a Buckminster Fuller fan for years and I have always thought his ideas---and other revolutionaries of that time---should be reexamined for validity and possibility in today's society.
It's a crucial time to rethink the green/sustainability narrative before it's entirely swallowed by the corporate disinformation brigade, the same ones who kidnapped our consciousness since 9/11. The green pioneers I write about in my new book SPACED OUT (Rizzoli, June 2008) and the "True Green" article in Architectural Digest were shocked into action when they saw that the planet was in mortal danger--forty years ago!--and the seeds of dissent were sewn. I know it would be nice to think otherwise, but how the green message is expressed may be as important as the content of that message.
- Alastair Gordon