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Welcome to the Nature-friendly
Experimental House
-Kaiwaka by the Mountain Brook, Northland, NZ
Yoshimasa Sakurai and Co-workers
Let’s stop polluting our precious earth immediately. Global cooperation is essential. We have a responsibility to restore what we have polluted. For that, we have to return to living modestly rather than pursuing a materialistic way of living.
As natural resources are limited, we have to establish social systems to reuse and recycle what we use. If waste is classified as it is collected, it can become a resource again rather than a pollutant.
Population is of vital importance. Recognizing the importance of the environment, we have to educate and guide the next generation.
Additonally, if we can live sustainably, we can find the direction to go.
We have to recognize that fossil energy will soon be exhausted, but we can rely on solar energy and still maintain a certain standard of living.
In order to examine nature-friendly and sustainable ways, we constructed an experimental house with the following four purposes;
- (1) Living with natural energies without using fossil energy.
(2) Using local nature-friendly vernacular materials to construct the house.
(3) Cleansing and decreasing the pollution caused by daily activity.
(4) Producing our own foods based on organic farming.
In parallel with the house construction, we are designing a computer program to assist an architect to plan and design a nature-friendly and sustainable house. The program is based on the data at the site.
We are close to realizing a sustainable house. Using the results obtained from the experimental house, we are starting to design a village in a remote area and an apartment building in an urban area. All the information obtained from our project will be at our home page on the Internet.
Overall view of the Experimental House
(1) Living by using only natural energy
(iii) Coppicing and its carbonization
(iv) Temperature change during cooking
(v) Cooking tools to improve efficiency
(1-2) Air conditioning in the house using ground heat
(1-3) Hot water for shower and dish washing
(1-4) Windmill power generation
(1-5) Other possible energy collection methods
(i) Solar radiation collection with a two-dimensional reflector
(ii) Solar radiation collection with porous material
(iii) Collection of radiation from clouds
(2) Using nature-friendly material during house construction.
(2-1) Cobbed Walls
(2-2) Thatch roof
(2-3) Rain-water for daily household use.
(3) Cleansing of exhausts and drained water from daily activity
(4) Self supporting food production based on organic farming
(5) Computer program for assisting an architect to design and plan a sustainable house.