What makes a house a hippie house? Its the combination of several elements;
Simplicity - Getting away from the gross, overindulgence of a capitalist ideology.
Whimsical - Added curves and unusual embellishments.
Color- Anything with outrageous color schemes.
Naural Building - Using natural materials to construct. (SEe Natural Building for full details.)
Solar revolution - using the sun to make heat and electricity.
School bus conversions - Taking creativity on the road, rent-free.
Small is beautiful - the tiny house revolution.
Bio-mimicry- Using the surroundings as inspiration. fitting into the natural world
Hippie archetecture
We are surrounded by terrible architecture in this modern world. The concrete box has taken over our environments and is reflected in the way we think. Creative people are not creating main-stream culture but are pushed to the margins of society, and are challenged to create their own realities.
Hippie architecture is defined by these few parameters…
House in Denmark
Handmade door
striving to reduce human impact on the environment
USING NATURAL, NON-TOXIC MATERIALS.
““Kristen wanted a house that was able to breathe, with soft shapes and built from 100% natural materials. Her aim was to live a simple life connected with nature’s rhythms where she could express herself.”- Natural Homes”
INCORPORATING NATURAL LIGHT, PLANTS AND SHAPES.
Cob house with inset book shelf and glass bottles
LOVE OF COLOR AND NOT AFRAID TO USE IT.
TIny houses, rustic living and bus conversions
RECYCLING CREATIVELY AND USING WHAT IS AVAILABLE.
Handmade door of cob house
Well, we’ve run out of money but we still want to do stuff. Now what? Build with scrap. It is the ultimate in recycling. Here are some suggestions from the Crone of Larabee Valley, Kate MacKay-
Suggestions for use of Pallets: build sheep or goat shelters with them – then staple sheep wire over the pallet interior where you want the animal to feed, leaving the top wire open to create a great hay feeder that you load from the top; right down through the middle of the pallet. Use smaller meshed sheep wire on an area so the kids can eat without having the adults steal from them. Or place them low in the dirt to use them for huge stepping stones over muddy areas.
-If you have been evicted, they make a cozy dry home. Make a box out of them and stuff it with straw. Try to get the pallets with plywood floors!
ECO-VILLAGE LIVING
Creating a community with like-minded people.
DESSEKILDE ECO-VILLAGE, DENMARK
DESSEKILDE ECO-VILLAGE, DENMARK
whimsical
Timmyland- an example of breakingout of squares-ville and making your own reality.
It just takes imagination and a willingness to live differently
Creating hip communities and hippie architecture supports alternative thought and solutions to social, economic and ecological problems - humanity at its best.
Cob house decoration
The sanctuary artist community
Timmyland, also known as Ranchito Cascabel, is Tim Sullivan's folk-art fantasy located just north of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Inspired by the work of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona, Spain, Sullivan turned what had been a rustic sleeping porch and storage room into a rambling, otherworldly, fantasy home.
BIO-MIMICRY
The hip are culture creators and one of the powerful tools of a culture creator is words that embody new concepts. When we birth a concept and embody it in a word, we have a new tool. When we wield that tool, empires of old thinking can crumble. (See hip words for more ideas)
Today’s word is bio-mimicry. The idea is that nature knows best and if we want to solve a problem, either physically or socially, we should look to nature to see how it’s done. This idea goes directly against the powers-that-be which are rooted in the old paradigm of subduing the wildness to make the world ‘better’ hence more like a parking lot.
McMall- mind-numbing
We, the hip-artistic-woke-weirdos, think this is drab and soul-numbing. This is NOT where we would seek food or shelter. So to counter-act this kind of thing, we look to nature. How can we make the world around us blend into nature rather than stick out? How can we incorporate nature into our structures to mimic the world around us?
It can be as simple as adding a natural piece of wood to a building. Just let it be un-straight. The natural curve mimics the trees around the building lending a natural aesthetic that nurtures the soul and pleases the eye.
It is undefinable shapes that give the world meaning and mysticism. When we live only with square things, we think we have defined the world, hence conquered the abstract and therefore squashed all magic from it.
There is so much magic in old wood. Using recycled materials can add character. The Japanese have a word called wabi-sabi, which means something like old repaired objects have more value because they have personality - they have been loved.
Now let’s do some art with old pieces of metal. Taking in the landscape and placing them in a natural setting makes the forms pop out and with not much effort beauty is attained.
Just a few old gears hung under a tree.
There is also great solutions to our environmental problems that can be seen easily in nature. Leaves absorb sunlight and get all the energy they need. We can do the same.
Poop just becomes dirt, which becomes fertilizer.
What about our waste. Poop is a problem. We flush it down the toilet and right into the river. It’s gone, right? Another powerful word is permaculture- one of its meanings is the idea that there is no waste, everything has a use. It is the ultimate in recycling. So our poop is not something to rid ourselves of by pumping into underground holding tanks or flush into rivers, it is a resource. In bio-mimicry we can look at all the leaves on the ground -they compost and rot. Why can’t our discarded biomass do the same?
Wastewater is also not something to scorn. It can make a very lush garden, growing many water-loving plants. In Art Lugwig’s books about water storage and water recycling, he makes marsh systems that clean water and make the land beautiful.
You wouldn’t even know there was a marsh system growing all these plants.
It blends right into natural gardens. With wastewater feeding it. The plants clean the water.
This is the old paradigm of gardening. More like enslaving nature and controlling every frickin’ blade of grass.
This is more of a natural garden. I call it gardening with the fairies. Let it all blend in and naturalize. Hippies tend to be more relaxed and garden with a light hand.