Michael Reynolds is an architect who lives in a large desert plateau in Taos, in the American state of New Mexico. There he has his headquarters, he cultivates his own plants and together with a group of collaborators designs experimental housing projects to which he calls ‘terrestrial ships’ and with which he has been breaking architectural and social norms for many years.
As explained by the documentary 'The Warrior of Garbage', directed by Oliver Hodge, Reynolds has been building this type of housing since the seventies, despite the fact that his methods have been systematically rejected and attacked by politicians, lawyers and even colleagues by profession .
His proposal is born of the concern for issues that he considers crucial for all humanity, such as the imminent energy decrease and climate change, issues that lead him to raise the urgent need of a new way of life, beginning with the elementary: housing. In that sense, it proposes to completely separate from the conventional and create sustainable houses, with autonomous services and with a minimum impact on the environment.
Their homes are provided with water and energy themselves, they maintain a comfortable temperature all year without the need for heating or air conditioning, recycling waste and for the most part they are constructed in a very unorthodox way, with materials that anyone would consider garbage, such as Old tires, used plastic and glass bottles or empty beer cans.
We leave you the documentary to enter the world of Reynolds and better understand its philosophy. If it were not for people like that, the world would be less interesting and, above all, except respectful of themselves.
The garbage warrior
