onawah
4th September 2024, 21:11
San Diego Mountaintop Magical Hobbit Village
San Diego man builds magical Hobbit Village in mountaintop ranch
Kirsten Dirksen
1.93M subscribers
Sep 1, 2024
(Kirsten Dirksen has a youtube channel that is devoted to "Videos about simple living, self-sufficiency, unconventional (and unique) homes, backyard gardens (and livestock), alternative transport, DIY, craftsmanship, and philosophies of life."
...So not necessarily all about off-grid living, but I wasn't sure where else this might fit, and am open to suggestions. What about a new subforum entitled "Creative and Alternative Lifestyle" or something like that? Following are just a couple of examples from Dirksen's really interesting and innovate, ongoing collection of videos.)
"Homes are square, they said. Polymath James Hubbell built 100%-curvy Hobbit Village
In 1958, James and Anne Hubbell bought cheap land in the Cuyamaca Mountains east of San Diego to build a home with their own hands using materials from the land. Over the next several decades, they built a cluster of unique homes across the property to accommodate their growing family and working needs.
Using only shovels, they dug into the hillside, using existing boulders as footings and wood milled on the property. Modeled after nature, the shelters seem to grow from the land with curving walls reminiscent of seashells. “There are no straight lines in the Hubbell Universe,” explains Hubbell Foundation director Marianne Gerdes.
When they outgrew their original one-room adobe cabin, they built a kitchen/living room as an independent structure, connected by a courtyard to a new bedroom space. This outdoor connection between the two parts of the home forced them to step outside, even during a snowy winter, and experience nature daily.
When they became a family of 6 and outgrew this space, they began building an independent “Boys’ House” for their 4 sons. It’s half-buried into the hill and modeled after a seashell. When we stepped inside, it felt like entering an animal burrow with flowing chambers connected by tunneling. “It’s like the ultimate gopher cave,” suggested Gerdes.
The 2003 Cedar Fire burnt down most of the couple’s own bedroom, but it went right over the partially subterranean Boys' House (as well as their underground kiva), so the couple moved in here (their sons were now grown). “They talk about staying here as being a totally different space than their own homes,” explains Gerdes. “The round nature is what they call an amorphous space where you don't really know where you are at all times. You know, you're always surprised by the space.”
James Hubbell died this past spring, but the hillside hamlet he created continues to flourish. It’s now a site for artists to continue his work, crafting stained glass windows and metal works for others’ homes. It’s also open to public tours and is lived in by a caretaker couple who inhabit a “Cottage in the Woods” designed by James and his architect son Drew."
—Visit the Hubbell Foundation: https://ilanlaelfoundation.org/visit/
—James Hubbell on Wikipedia: https://ilanlaelfoundation.org/visit/
—In memoriam: https://timesofsandiego.com/arts/2024...
kTFTg9RNUDg
Rundown apartments reborn as food-forest coliving Agritopia
Kirsten Dirksen
1.93M subscribers
Sep 26, 2021
"In 2007, Ole and Maitri Ersson bought the rundown Cabana apartment complex in the city and immediately began to de-pave parking spaces to make space for what today is a huge permaculture coliving space and urban food forest.
Today, the Kailash Ecovillage has 55 residents who all help farm where there was once pavement, grass, a swimming pool, and an overgrown weed patch.
The community is well-prepared for systems collapse; they have extensive rainwater collection and storage, plenty of produce and they process their own sewage. Their permitted sanitation project complies with international building codes for compost toilet and urine diversion systems and turns their pee and poop into nitrogen and compost.
Here, nearly everything is shared. There are two community electric cars - donated by the Erssons who no longer have a private car-, shared bicycles (and bike trailers), an extensive fruit orchard, berry and grape patches, and a considerable community garden space. Photovoltaics provide about two-thirds of the energy consumed by the complex.
Neil Robinson is the community’s full-time farmer who has sold thousands of dollars of Kailash produce at farmers' markets. He moved in as a way to prepare for systemic collapse. “I wanted to learn to grow food and then have a system that could step in. We have water, we have food.”
Ole explains, “We're in this zone where it's not a question of if, but when, we're going to get a Richter 9 earthquake… that's going to break all kinds of grids, the power grid is likely going to go down, the sewer grid almost undoubtedly and it's probably going to take months, if not years, to get the sewer system going again.” Their sanitation project can absorb 60 adults for months.
Rents here are lower than the Portland average because the Erssons want Kailash to be accessible to all income levels. There’s a 300-person waitlist, but Ole hopes others will follow their example.
"If you look at it from an economic perspective no business would want a complex landscape like this because it's way too much maintenance, but what you have to do is turn the maintenance over to the residents, and then they do it: they get joy; it's an antidepressant; it's a way of creating food; it's a way of creating community; so you have to do it in a certain way, but it's definitely a lot more work than the typical grass and shrub landscape for sure."
https://www.kailashecovillage.org "
iCGXVk-cBVk
San Diego man builds magical Hobbit Village in mountaintop ranch
Kirsten Dirksen
1.93M subscribers
Sep 1, 2024
(Kirsten Dirksen has a youtube channel that is devoted to "Videos about simple living, self-sufficiency, unconventional (and unique) homes, backyard gardens (and livestock), alternative transport, DIY, craftsmanship, and philosophies of life."
...So not necessarily all about off-grid living, but I wasn't sure where else this might fit, and am open to suggestions. What about a new subforum entitled "Creative and Alternative Lifestyle" or something like that? Following are just a couple of examples from Dirksen's really interesting and innovate, ongoing collection of videos.)
"Homes are square, they said. Polymath James Hubbell built 100%-curvy Hobbit Village
In 1958, James and Anne Hubbell bought cheap land in the Cuyamaca Mountains east of San Diego to build a home with their own hands using materials from the land. Over the next several decades, they built a cluster of unique homes across the property to accommodate their growing family and working needs.
Using only shovels, they dug into the hillside, using existing boulders as footings and wood milled on the property. Modeled after nature, the shelters seem to grow from the land with curving walls reminiscent of seashells. “There are no straight lines in the Hubbell Universe,” explains Hubbell Foundation director Marianne Gerdes.
When they outgrew their original one-room adobe cabin, they built a kitchen/living room as an independent structure, connected by a courtyard to a new bedroom space. This outdoor connection between the two parts of the home forced them to step outside, even during a snowy winter, and experience nature daily.
When they became a family of 6 and outgrew this space, they began building an independent “Boys’ House” for their 4 sons. It’s half-buried into the hill and modeled after a seashell. When we stepped inside, it felt like entering an animal burrow with flowing chambers connected by tunneling. “It’s like the ultimate gopher cave,” suggested Gerdes.
The 2003 Cedar Fire burnt down most of the couple’s own bedroom, but it went right over the partially subterranean Boys' House (as well as their underground kiva), so the couple moved in here (their sons were now grown). “They talk about staying here as being a totally different space than their own homes,” explains Gerdes. “The round nature is what they call an amorphous space where you don't really know where you are at all times. You know, you're always surprised by the space.”
James Hubbell died this past spring, but the hillside hamlet he created continues to flourish. It’s now a site for artists to continue his work, crafting stained glass windows and metal works for others’ homes. It’s also open to public tours and is lived in by a caretaker couple who inhabit a “Cottage in the Woods” designed by James and his architect son Drew."
—Visit the Hubbell Foundation: https://ilanlaelfoundation.org/visit/
—James Hubbell on Wikipedia: https://ilanlaelfoundation.org/visit/
—In memoriam: https://timesofsandiego.com/arts/2024...
kTFTg9RNUDg
Rundown apartments reborn as food-forest coliving Agritopia
Kirsten Dirksen
1.93M subscribers
Sep 26, 2021
"In 2007, Ole and Maitri Ersson bought the rundown Cabana apartment complex in the city and immediately began to de-pave parking spaces to make space for what today is a huge permaculture coliving space and urban food forest.
Today, the Kailash Ecovillage has 55 residents who all help farm where there was once pavement, grass, a swimming pool, and an overgrown weed patch.
The community is well-prepared for systems collapse; they have extensive rainwater collection and storage, plenty of produce and they process their own sewage. Their permitted sanitation project complies with international building codes for compost toilet and urine diversion systems and turns their pee and poop into nitrogen and compost.
Here, nearly everything is shared. There are two community electric cars - donated by the Erssons who no longer have a private car-, shared bicycles (and bike trailers), an extensive fruit orchard, berry and grape patches, and a considerable community garden space. Photovoltaics provide about two-thirds of the energy consumed by the complex.
Neil Robinson is the community’s full-time farmer who has sold thousands of dollars of Kailash produce at farmers' markets. He moved in as a way to prepare for systemic collapse. “I wanted to learn to grow food and then have a system that could step in. We have water, we have food.”
Ole explains, “We're in this zone where it's not a question of if, but when, we're going to get a Richter 9 earthquake… that's going to break all kinds of grids, the power grid is likely going to go down, the sewer grid almost undoubtedly and it's probably going to take months, if not years, to get the sewer system going again.” Their sanitation project can absorb 60 adults for months.
Rents here are lower than the Portland average because the Erssons want Kailash to be accessible to all income levels. There’s a 300-person waitlist, but Ole hopes others will follow their example.
"If you look at it from an economic perspective no business would want a complex landscape like this because it's way too much maintenance, but what you have to do is turn the maintenance over to the residents, and then they do it: they get joy; it's an antidepressant; it's a way of creating food; it's a way of creating community; so you have to do it in a certain way, but it's definitely a lot more work than the typical grass and shrub landscape for sure."
https://www.kailashecovillage.org "
iCGXVk-cBVk