The village of hope

Saihate eco-village © 2013 Kien Hoang Le/ Agency Focus

Following Fukushima's tsunami in 2011, the Kosakai family moves out of Tokyo to the southern island of Kyushu. 
On a hilly ground amidst orange/ citrus trees overlooking the sea, with the help of a few friends, they build the eco-village of Saihate, using the emergency of the post-nuclear era as catalyst to connect with a biological lifestyle.












© Hiroshi Manaka

Saihate village - building site © http://livingpermaculture.blogspot.co.uk/p/about.html

With their organic volumes, some of the living spaces remind Nader Khalili's Earth dwellings, using the superadobe technology, a mixture of sand bags and earth. 

Superadobe technology © Calearth.org

The dome is being raised by digging earth underneath the ground to re-use it as building material, reducing the need for transporting goods. 
Earth dwellings require low technical skills so that the all family can participate to the building process.  

Saihate eco-village © 2013 Kien Hoang Le/ Agency Focus

In the same eco-process as Michael Reynolds's Earthships, tyres are used to structure the outer membrane of the building, saving the environment from the accumulation of non perishable (and highly available) waste.  

Saihate eco-village © 2013 Kien Hoang Le/ Agency Focus


Beyond the survival endeavour, Saihate eco-village also is a creative/experimental/musical project : you can see more here

Saihate village - Rocket stove and tatami © http://livingpermaculture.blogspot.co.uk/p/about.html

Spaceship Earth and the designer Guru

© Buckminster Fuller Institute / Director unknown

Buckminster Fuller meets the Hippies is a rare footage showing the architect in conversation with a group of Hippies from the west coast. It was projected at the Barbican centre as Part of Radical Nature thanks to Liam Young, co-founder of Tomorrow's Thoughts Today. 
The film which refers to design, geodesic structures or spatial agency becomes an insightful and captivating journey about metaphysics and the purpose of man on earth.




















Dome over Manahattan - 1960 © Buckminster Fuller Institute/ Shoji Sadao

The assumption that we are on earth not to consume but to learn becomes in Buckminster's fashion the vision that humans are astronauts and earth the spaceship; technologies are tools to drive the spaceship and not instruments of fear.


Drop city

LA Dome village - 1994 © Dome village/ photo © Craig Chamberlain © Ronda Flanzbaum

His faith in (utopian) technology is celebrated with the geodesic domes that can be erected as high as needed : lightweight and low cost, they are put to the test by the hippie commune of Drop city. 
The geodesic dome will then inspire the radical LA Dome village which shelters homeless people.

Counter communities - 2003 © Croy & Elser

A second footage, Counter communities by Croy & Elser which exemplifies the influence of utopian architecture with more counter-cultural experiments - Arcosanti, Nader khalili's earth shelters -, mostly concentrates on Michael Reynolds's earthships. 
Challenged by the californian building legislation, Reynolds brings the concept of his earthships (build in situ from recycled, natural, local material) to tsunami's inflected areas in India, to show locals how to erect emergency shelters.


Once upon an island : utopian cowboys, guru astronauts ...