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A City Made of Waste
Teddy Cruz, The Nation
… On the edges of Tijuana, rife with poverty, social upheaval and a severe housing shortage, the detritus of San Diego’s suburbs is reassembled into a fresh tableau, a city made of waste. But not only small, scattered debris is imported and recycled into makeshift housing in Tijuana. Entire pieces of one city travel southward as residential ready-made houses are directly plugged in to the other city’s fabric. This process begins when a Tijuana speculator travels to San Diego to buy up the little post-World War II bungalows that have been slated for demolition. The little houses are loaded onto trailers to travel to Tijuana, where they clear customs before making their journey south. On some days here, one can see houses, just like cars and pedestrians, waiting in line to cross the border.
Finally, the houses enter Tijuana and are mounted on one-story metal frames, leaving an empty space at the street level to accommodate future uses. These floating houses define a space of opportunity beneath them, one that will be filled over time with additions like a taco stand, a car repair shop, a garden.
One city profits from the dwellings that the other one discards–recycling the “leftovers” of the other into a sort of second-hand urbanism, creating countless new possibilities. This is how the border cities enact a strange mirroring effect. While the seemingly permanent housing stock in San Diego becomes disposable overnight, the ephemeral dwellings in Tijuana yearn to become permanent.
(29 January 2009)
Great story, but the author “buries the lead” — puts the most interesting section in the middle of the story. -BA
Independence vs Splendid Isolation
Hans Noeldner, Entropic Journal
The most elemental, fundamental form of independence is self-locomotion: walking and running, meandering and strolling, riding a bicycle or rolling one’s wheelchair, pushing a baby stroller to the library or pulling a Radio Flier home from the grocery store. Yet in the past 60 years our society has done its utmost to undermine and destroy this independence.
Didn’t we realize that a house out in the country would make it impossible for our child to literally skip on over to friends’ houses? Didn’t we see that all the driving we and our neighbors would do meant living in terror that our adolescent would ride his bicycle beyond our “safe” cul-de-sac? Didn’t we anticipate that building the new school at the far edge of town diminished possibilities for teenagers in the former heart of the village to walk to football practice?
Is all the “splendid isolation” in our lives – seclusion within spacious houses and fenced yards and climate-controlled motor vehicles – worth it? Is importing 70% of our car fuel “independence”? If we would only stop and think, we would know better. But where I live (Oregon, Wisconsin, population 8,721), few are willing to even admit these mistakes. Thus I am at a loss where to begin. This is what frightens me most.
(29 January 2009)
EntropyPawsed Uses “A Pattern Language”
Bonnie Gifford, EntropyPawsed
When we purchased our property, the house was an unfinished shell. We considered tearing it down – its long axis runs north/south, rather than east/west, the best passive solar orientation. We eventually decided to work with the existing structure so as not to waste the wood products already used. To do this, we knew we needed some design guidance.
We utilized the book “A Pattern Language” by architect Christopher Alexander and others. By 2001 when we began designing our EntropyPawsed living space, this book seemed almost as if it were brought to us by destiny. Several years prior, as we first began exploring organic gardening, and then Permaculture, we had been given several introductions to the book: by a relative who was an architecture student; by several practitioners of Permaculture; and finally in Frank’s Permaculture courses at the EcoVillage Training Center and Earthaven.
In our modern culture, unless we have specifically trained in design or architecture, most of us feel unable to undertake the design process without professional help. The beauty and strength of “A Pattern Language” is that it provides virtually all of the tools needed to design fully human living spaces. It really is as simple as sitting down with the book and giving it enough time and attention. We can still recall the feeling of personal empowerment that came as our design progressed.
While the patterns of construction described in the book are fascinating, they were never really worked out and accepted. We opted to go with a more standard “stick built” approach because it is easily accessible, and Frank felt most comfortable in implementing and enhancing the standard construction experience he had gained over the years.
We spent hours looking at the various inter-related patterns described in the book, and ended up using more than a dozen in our home. We found that using the “language” of these patterns helped us look holistically and systematically at what outcomes we wanted in our home: function, comfort, beauty, ease of maintenance.
Our primary pattern is “Farmhouse Kitchen.” We wanted the home to reflect the rural surroundings, be comfortable, and to function well as a place to transform garden produce into fresh and preserved food. Using the “Open Shelves” pattern in the kitchen saved the expense (and space) of cabinets. The “Cooking Layout” and “Sunny Counter” patterns also helped create comfortable, usable space.
Within the “Farmhouse Kitchen Pattern” we embedded the “Fire Circle.” The fire has always been a place where people gather for conversation and story telling. We very carefully considered the location and orientation of the wood stove. We wanted the “Fire Circle” to connect and function, without interfering, with the “Farmhouse Kitchen.” We also needed the stove to be centrally located for even heat distribution.
(27 January 2009)
