How they’re built

Phil Basehart is a lead builder at the Earthship Biotecture near Taos. He also teaches at the Earthship Academy, where students can learn how to build the structures.

He explains the guiding principle behind Earthship construction.

“The basic concept is garbage,” Basehart said. “The Earthship house is made out of whatever you happen to have a lot of that would normally go into landfills.”

Most Earthship homes start with used tires. Those tires are filled with earth and are used to form the exterior walls.

A typical Earthship uses 1,000 or more tires and that can be a huge benefit to the environment.

“Tires are a problem because tires can’t be put in a landfill,” Basehart said. “They’re typically put in their own storage place and they generally catch on fire. You can imagine the result of that.”

Other key building blocks in Earthship construction are bottles, cans, Styrofoam containers, reclaimed sheet metal — whatever makes sense in a given location.

At a build in Haiti, Styrofoam containers — a big waste problem there — were used as insulation. In the Philippines, cardboard

Building materials, design and even orientation all play a role in making an Earthship self-sufficient.

Typically, three walls are constructed of tires filled with compacted dirt and those walls, along with the roof, are enclosed in a thick layer of earth. That thick layer maintains a temperature that isn’t easily influenced by the heat or cold of the external surface.

The fourth wall, which faces south in the Northern Hemisphere, is made of glass. A greenhouse along this glass wall serves as a buffer zone from the elements and aids in food production