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Earthship community in New Mexico highlights off‑grid living.
Summary
Peter Santenello's 64‑minute YouTube film tours an Earthship community near Taos, New Mexico, and interviews founder Michael Reynolds about the design and daily life inside self‑contained, off‑grid homes.
Content
Peter Santenello's film follows a day visiting an off‑grid Earthship community near Taos, New Mexico, and includes an on‑camera interview with Michael (Mike) Reynolds, founder of the Earthship movement. The video runs about 64 minutes and shows both finished homes and partially built projects across a large development called Atlantis. Reynolds discusses technical details of the homes, the movement's history and ongoing efforts to make the designs easier to permit and build. Residents share how living in Earthships shapes their daily routines and expenses.
What the film shows:
- The Atlantis development covers about 640 acres, with roughly half reserved for clustered housing and half left as open land, and only about a dozen home sites remaining.
- Interiors function as self‑contained "biospheres," with indoor planter cells that treat greywater, rainwater harvested to cisterns, solar panels and battery banks, and warm, humid indoor gardens growing fruit and herbs.
- Structural features include rammed‑earth tires used as heavy thermal mass walls and designs that tap into ground and solar heat to regulate temperature.
- The filmmaker visits multiple Earthship models, from high‑end showpieces to the simplified "Refuge" model intended to be more affordable and widely buildable.
- Michael Reynolds discusses his legal history, including losing his New Mexico architectural license and his role in creating the Sustainable Testing Sites Act, while residents describe reduced living expenses and lifestyle changes after moving in.
Summary:
The film offers an intimate, practical look at how Earthships are built, how they operate as off‑grid homes and what life in the community can be like. It highlights both technical features and personal stories while noting Reynolds's ongoing aim to refine designs for broader permitting and adoption. Undetermined at this time.
