I had the opportunity to participate in a three-week long internship to assist with building an Earthship home. I learned a great deal of hands-on building assignments that were at macro and micro levels of building. Outdoor tasks included mixing mortar and adobe, as well as pounding a sledge hammer to fill old car tires packed with dirt, and stacking these same tires to make exterior privacy walls. Indoor jobs I tended to were organizing glass bottles, cleaning them inside and out, cutting them in held and transforming them into ‘bottle bricks’. I would then carefully and meticulously stack empty cans and the bottle bricks to make interior non-structural walls, supported by mortar.

I learned a significant amount of endurance in my time at Earthship Biotecture. I was exposed to the artisan techniques of making dwellings out of both recyclables and non-recyclables. These items might have as well have gone to the landfill, but instead were collected, carefully washed and given a second purpose. Restoring things and putting attention into what we readily discard is a artistic craft. I was so pleased to have witnessed first hand how Earthship Biotecture took these measures a step further, and build sustainable and functionable homes.