New Mexico: the greenhouse as a buffer zone

Michael Reynolds finished an architecture degree in 1969, moved to Taos, and spent the following decades building houses out of earth-packed tires, cans and bottles. By 1979 the pattern that would become the Earthship was in place: heavy earth-bermed walls at the back, and a long greenhouse running the whole south face.

The corridor does two jobs

The greenhouse grows food, which is what people notice. Its other job matters more: it's a warm, humid buffer between the living space and a high desert that swings tens of degrees between afternoon and midnight. You never open a door onto the outdoors — you open it onto the greenhouse, which has already taken the edge off.

The idea travels

Earthships were the first version of this to be built in real numbers, in enough climates to prove the buffer principle wasn't a New Mexico quirk. The material palette is very much of its time and place. The section drawing — mass behind, glass in front, tempered air between — is not.