I am thinking about building materials for houses, and all the possibilities for recycled and waste products to be fixed into building blocks, inert, useful in the human environment, removed from the awful spilling out and harmful interactions with nature.. A damp course of compacted plastic, the heat/cold reservoirs of cob houses and the Earthship houses(look them up), straw bale houses....it is amazing to think of what can form the shell of a house which is then hidden behind whitewash, siding or a painted surface ! This idea of course is very old - wattle-and-daub walls of medieval houses are still standing in English villages, and the picturesque half-timbered houses beg the question "What makes up the other half?" I wonder whether there can be another element - time capsule blocks, the creation of building blocks containing items of interest to future archaeologists, made to last a thousand years. One material to hand are the millions of books that are now passing into furnaces and landfills. I believe that there will be a continuing demand for and love of these physical objects, but the numbers will be far fewer. Could every new house have built-in bookblocks silently providing solidity and insulation until the house is a ruin and history is revealed? I like to think of a trove of books and papers chosen by me (and, alright, my vanity would entice me to include my own work) waiting for later times, even for the aliens when they finally deign to come or get blown off course with sputtering warp drive. And we don't need to stop there - how about all the tea sets our children really don't want to inherit? Or the shoes and boots too worn to pass on - wouldn't the wear tell stories? I imagine what the equivalent classroom might do with each child presented with a shoe like an owl pellet to investigate and tell its story. The cob house sites show how the heat/cold banks can contain some of our clutter - so useful for centuries if well done, and how can we tell what will fascinate or be needed, how do we know what to pack for the trip to 2500 BCE? If we need to be tidier and more careful as we stagger into the future, why not have some fun?
-Richard
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