Earth-Sheltered Homes

MA Elective Course

20.00196_Kurs_WF_MA_AT (Earth-Sheltered Homes / Erdgeschütztes Wohnen) (2 SWS / 3 CP), 16 Studierende

Language: English

Time: Thursday 13.04.2023, 14:00 – 15:30 (first meeting), weekly appointments.

Room: Raum: C.A.R.L., Raum S07 (1385|207), Claßenstraße 11.

Lecturer: Dr. Ing. Andrea Alberto Dutto

This elective course is dedicated to the relationship between the earth, shelters and dwellers. In particular, we will take as our field of analysis a series of contemporary do-it-yourself handbooks for earth-sheltered homes published since the 1970s, in the United States, in response to the first major global energy crisis. We will try to understand how the authors of these handbooks—often outside the legal limits granted by the authorities—anticipated the work of North American research institutes on earth-sheltered construction. While these authors expressed ethical orientations that diverged from each other, they were all oriented to an alternative idea of self-reliant living, in harmony with nature and independent from real estate and mass-production building contractors.
The course aims to grasp these authors’ aesthetic and ethical ideas in constructing their earth-sheltered buildings in search of “the good life.” During the course, several experimental writing and illustration exercises will be proposed to the participants.