Living in the year 2010 can be unreal sometime. In this second millennium we are becoming more and more plugged to the system. All the energy and food resources are not within our control. Even our own homes are build by others. Yet we have or could acquire all the knowledge necessary to be self-sustainable. We spend nearly all our times working for others and a little or perhaps no time at all for ourselves. Are we really living in ‘The Matrix’?
To have a self-sustainable living is not a far-fetch idea. An architect named Mike Reynolds has been experimenting with a radical self-sustainable living in a desert in Taos, New Mexico for more than 35 years. But in our complacent lives we will always ignore such ideas unless a catastrophe happens. But in Palestine 3000 A.D. such situation did happen. After the great war all that remains is a hostile environment of acid dust. It was tough to visualize how things will be in a thousand years from now. Most likely something unimaginable but yet I need references of the present to link the story to the present situation in Palestine.
This hut-house design is one of the design that I can reveal here. It was inspired by Mike Reynolds’ Earthship self-sustainable housing. The concept is perfect for my story because in such apocalyptic situation people need to rebuilt and survive on their own. After reviewing various Earthship designs and typical old Middle Eastern mud houses, I came out with this simple design, a modest structure in an outpost:
Designing it with pencil was easy but the 3D modelling was quite challenging. The design is totally organic without any hard cubical shape. The structure uses three domes which are not hemispherical perfect by choice. The Earthship’s tyre element was abandon because it may ends up as a large mansion which will not reflect a peasant life. The domes connected together in a unique way using a small elongated sphere to form a connecting gateway. From the top view the connecting sphere is clearly seen in the centre.
The final design do not faithfully represent the initial pencil sketch. The doors and windows are repositioned according to the script where the characters stand, walk, and even run. But certain elements from the Earthship design still remain like the gutter and the energy panel on the roof. I have added a silo kind of structure and also some kind of communication structure.It is possible to built the structure in this present day. Everything was done to scale. The glass windows and doors are not flat. The curvature follows the contour of the dome. That might be difficult for an individual to built. So is the solar panel on both roof. It might not be energy efficient to have it on a curve shape facing both solstices But this is the future. The technology probably a thousand times better then. Perhaps energy resources may be cultivated rather than bought.
Here is the wireframe view revealing the interior and also the human height reference. The interior is fully furnished but there are still some modifications to be done. The most difficult part of designing this structure is trying to keep it simple.
The above are just the computer previews and not the final visual treatment. The hut-house is actually a crime scene in the story. As a great fan of CSI Las Vegas I had placed much detail in the design. Where things are positioned and how they look like. It is tough to decide not to be influenced by today's perspective and not to be too futuristic like Star Wars. Even as simple it may seems the design went through fifty iterations. That is damn a lot for a modest hut-house in a graphic novel.
Palestine 3000 A.D. is not just a futuristic fiction or just to remind us about the situation in Palestine right now. It is also a reminder about our own situation of being too plugged to the system. It is not just about energy or food resources but also our thinking because most of it are fed by the system especially the west. Perhaps we can never survive outside of the system but sometime we need to unplug. We need to free our mind.
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