SHAC is in the House

Sustainable Habitat Challenge - www.shac.org.nz

SHAC challenges teams to build or retrofit a more sustainable house, building, office, classroom or community hall. Form a tertiary, industry, or community-led team, and work collaboratively, involve young people and communicate widely about your designs.

It is amazing to see how the people in NZ are building homes out of the earth.  Their walls are constructed of mud...well, mixed just right with a little cement and foliage for better support.  However, if not mixed just right, it doesn't hold up.  These mud huts are not what you think...when said and done, these are $100,000 homes. 

Another team built a relocatable, energy-efficient, one-bedroom unit out of recycled materials.

The Plant Room  - This is pretty cool.  You actually bolt on an extra room to the side of a high-rise apartment building as a garden area.   

Ok, we're really going places when one builds a high-spec straw bale eco home but obviously not mainstream and unlikely to ever be commercialized.

There are other examples of this type of sustainable building.  Check out the website and watch some of the videos.

J2M