As spring approaches, the Rabbits are coming out of their warrens and looking for some space to stretch their legs and find a nice place to live for the summer. We've made it through another winter of close quarters and overstuffed housing and are ready for a little more space to let our minds and bodies wander in.
But our minds are already turning to next winter when the cold will drive us back inside from sleeping on our hammocks and in our various tents, campers, and the school bus. By then we hope to have recruited some more rabbits so we'd better have more space if we don't want to be even more crowded than this year.
Thus "The New Skyhouse". Skyhouse is itching to get itself into some new digs and we've got some grand aspirations for an ecologically designed house that can be a great home for us, as well as a demonstration of all the alternative building techniques we've been reading and dreaming about for years. Of course we want something that is a beautiful place to live, calming the soul and promoting community while taking no energy to heat or cool and built only out of sorghum stalks and old post-it notes. Hey we can dream can't we?
But the practical is ever present now that we are trying to make our dreams into reality. What can we afford financially? What can we get done given our labor pool and the time allotted? What compromises are we willing to make along the way? What skills and experience do we have that we can take advantage of? How do we keep things simple and straightforward while still getting the home we want?
With all these questions and factors to keep in mind it makes for a complex design process. We've been meeting and talking about what we are really looking for in a home, technically, aesthetically and socially. And we've recognized this as an opportunity to get assistance from some folks with more experience in this realm. We've decided to hire an architectural firm with experience in alternative construction and a specialty in strawbale construction. Equally important, they seem to share our principles around the design process as well: participatory design which values the input of all, empowerment by sharing knowledge and experience, and seeing the value of the intuitive as well as the logical.
So with great enthusiasm and hope we will be going through an accelerated design process in late April with an eye toward breaking ground in early June. It's a tight schedule but we are all excited about the work and see creating more housing as one of our highest priorities this year. We look forward to sharing designs and drawings and hopefully pictures of the ground breaking in our next newsletter. Wish us luck.
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