From DWELL magazine.

1
From DWELL magazine. May, 2009. Story Dan
Maginn. Illustration Jim Stoten.
2
Life was much harder when humans lived in caves.
Consider a typical Sunday dinner First we'd have
to go out and whack a mammoth then we'd have to
invent a wheel to schlep the mammoth back to the
cave the we'd have to collect sticks and dung
and figure out a way for the whole mess to catch
fire. If all went well, we'd finally be able to
fry up a chop before night fell and the jackals
attacked.
3
We can't know for sure, but I imagine all this
work made us grumpy.
4
Fast forward a few millennia. we're still around
taller, a bit less furry), and we still get cold
and hungry, but times have changed. Now, if we're
cold we can turn a knob on the wall and warm air
blows out. If we are hungry we order food and a
delivery human shuttles it to our door with her
blue Pontiac Lemans. While effortlessly obtained
warm air and Buffalo chicken pizzas might mark
progress of a sort, our pursuit of the easy life
has created some serious environmental problems
that have the potential to make us pine for the
days of cave dwellers and mammoths. We can do
better.
5
Luckily, evolution has seen to it that humans
have the ability to define and solve problems,
should we choose to do so. By decommissioning our
modern-day caves as energy-sucking pleasure boxes
and re-commissioning them as efficient
instruments of shelter, we can more directly
control their impact on our communities and on
the planet. With an understanding of the issues
at stake, we must use our opposable thumbs and
sizable brains to retool our homes-and redesign
our behavior within them.
6
Although some of the steps we can take are small
and highly implementable, others are much
greater. Some require the purchase of nifty
gadgets and others require relatively intensive,
non-glamorous behavioral changes. If we really
want to make a difference, the challenge is to
design 2 an effective, personalized strategy-one
that balances our desire to live sustainably with
a desire to live comfortably.
7
We'll begin by taking a look at "whole house"
ideas that can quickly reduce our resource usage
across the board, then we'll zero in on more
localized home zones.
8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
(No Transcript)