Living green: the eco-house

Not the usual houses

Remember those cute, cozy hobbit houses on Lord of the Rings? Remember how much you wanted to get one, leave your family behind and forget about that concrete jungle filled with responsibilities? Cause I do. And for some, that dream became much more than wishful thinking while chewing Doritos on the couch.

Reinventing your lifestyle starting from the house seems like a giant task – and it’s because it surely is. In the last decades, there’s been much talking on how to go zero waste, how to force your family to produce less trash, invest in renewable energy and install that absolutely charming composting toilet in the house. The research of a synthesis between architecture and green has birthed interesting projects all over the world, like the vertical forests in Milan, in Utrecht, in Singapore. It’s obviously difficult to rethink such established and crowded cities with a green mind, yet much more could be done in those busy concrete jungles that stand as a massive producer of pollution and carbon emission. In the meantime, out of the city centers, eco-houses are having their glorious momentum.

Eco-house: a sustainable way of life

The Eco-house reinvents the concept of home applying the green theme on a 360° scale. Hence, you’ll have a cute, tiny house that takes advantage of daylight, uses solar panels, harvests rainwater, and possibly holds some space for a vegetable garden that makes your grandma utterly jealous. It’s basically an upgrade of those cool 80s treehouses you’ve always dreamed of as a kid but never had cause your grandpa wasn’t skilled enough to build one. Be it Freudian revenge or an inspired advocation, opting for an eco-house can be both challenging and fun – but definitely beneficial for the environment. No doubts about that.

Some among us took the concept of Eco-house quite to heart and jumped in it with both feet like those tattooing No Regrets on their chest. This Canadian couple built a fairytale eco-dome made of earthbags pressed all together, also thanks to the Cal-earth institute that provided the house blueprints on top of a helping hand. Their eco-house underwent obvious modifications based on the local climate conditions, but the result is clever and stunning: composed of various hubs, the house is simple yet welcoming, properly insulated, provided with solar power and a rocket stove.
In Wales, they got even more carried away and built a whole ecovillage, thanks to the One Planet Development policy promoted by the Welsh Government. Here, the community built the Lammas village, filled with dwell-houses, barns, greenhouses and workshop space for everyone to use. They live on all forms of sustainable energy and permaculture, adopting low-impact solutions and a self-reliance lifestyle.

How to get your Eco-House

But you don’t have to find a spirit-free, green enthusiast group of people to make the change happen. Sure, the problem with eco-houses is the availability and the hard work that goes into it. So luckily, this world full of geniuses has decided to make your life a bit easier. For instance, the platform WikiHouse provides tons of free blueprints of prettily designed eco-houses, as rocket stove well as a huge network of local microfactories that prepare all the material you need. Of course, you’ll have to deal with the purchase of land yourself, but once you’ve placed your order, constructing your house will be as easy as assembling an ikea nightstand.

And if you don’t feel particularly handy, or you have yet to befriend that wood-skilled, long-bearded friend in your life, you can always opt for prefabricated eco-houses. There’s such a huge selection out there, and all of these uniquely designed houses are projected for a zero-waste lifestyle. And not a single drop of sweat involved.