Back in the 1970s, architect Michael Reynolds decided that his profession didn’t jibe with his personal convictions. “Architecture wasn’t answering the needs of the planet,” Reynolds says, “so we came up with the term biotecture.” Meshing biology with the physics of architecture, Reynolds took the title of biotect, founded the Taos, N.M.–based company Earthship Biotecture, and designed a construction method that uses human-made by-products to produce homes that are self-sustainable and have virtually no impact on the environment, and minimal impact on an owner’s wallet.

“[The homes] are so far beyond a house that we didn’t consider the word ‘house’ when making them,” Reynolds says. Instead, he calls them earthships. Six key concepts of biotecture — power, water, sewage, comfort, food, and building with natural and recyclable materials — combine to produce a home that generates its own power, doesn’t depend on aquifers or town water, treats and contains waste, regulates temperature naturally, and exists entirely off-grid.

Using What You’ve Got

Part of Reynolds’ purpose in developing biotecture was to stop creating waste and start using it. The key building blocks of any earthship are tires that are packed with earth and laid flat like oversized bricks. “There are literally billions of tires on the planet, and we don’t know what to do with them,” Reynolds explains. The walls are then smoothed over with an adobe mud plaster on the inside and backed by earth berms on the exterior. The rest of the structure is built with locally sourced repurposed materials, but the result is a sleek, thoroughly modern-looking house.

“[The costs of] building an earthship are on par with a conventional house, except there are no utility bills,” says Kirsten Jacobsen, director of education for Earthship Biotecture and an earthship homeowner. “I have satellite TV and Wi-Fi,” Jacobsen says, adding that those are the only monthly bills she pays for her home. Because electric stoves are such a drain on her solar batteries, she cooks with propane. “I pay about $50 to $60 a year for it.”

The earthship is powered by sun and rain. Solar panels on the roof gather energy to power the electronics and heat the water. “I have two solar panels that run my entire house,” Jacobsen says. Gutters direct rainwater into buried cisterns. According to Jacobsen, earthships that see as little as eight inches of rain annually are still amply supplied — partly because water is filtered and reused. And because the pumps that move water throughout the structure are solar powered, the entire system runs with no significant costs.

Heating and cooling are also free. While the earth’s surface heats and cools with the weather, a few feet down temperatures remain pretty constant. Earthships use dense materials like brick and stone for flooring to help conduct that steady temperature into the home. The earth-packed tires work to bring that temperature into the living space too, and the insulation surrounding the exterior blocks out the environmental temperature and minimizes energy loss. From there, sunlight does the rest.

A staple design feature on all earthships is a wall of windows that faces south (or, in the Southern Hemisphere, north) to let in the maximum amount of sunlight during the winter months, when the sun moves low through the sky. Raising and lowering the shade regulates how warm the air gets, and vents in the roof generate convection currents, moving a soft, cooling breeze through the building. New Mexico, where Jacobsen lives, is a perfect testing ground for the design.

Going Halfsies

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American house generates more than twice the amount of greenhouse gases that the typical car produces. Most of that pollution comes from electricity, temperature control, and waste — three major components in biotecture’s goal of self-sustainability. “It’s nice knowing that just by living in my house I’m not contributing to climate change,” Jacobsen says. “I feel like I’m meeting nature halfway.” According to Reynolds, many people feel the same.

“I’ve built hundreds of these,” Reynolds says. And through Earthship Biotecture he’s sold architectural plans and consulting services to hundreds more homeowners. One of his goals is to put an earthship in every major community as an educational tool. 

But whether or not you’re a green geek, earthships are a good financial investment according to Jacobsen. “My house is estimated at $389,000,” she explains. “That’s pretty competitive for real estate around here. But I’d never sell. I just love it too much.”