If you’ve never listened to the soundtrack of the musical Hair, or if you don’t know its Broadway and cultural significance, then you need to take a few minutes to check it out. The first thing you will realize is that you know at least one of the songs. They have become a part of our national psyche.
Here are some relevant links:
http://hairthemusical.com/history.html
https://trusted-astrology.com/what-is-the-age-of-aquarius/
So, what does this have to do with this blog post
about our house on Runaway Ridge?
Hair, opened up on Broadway in 1967.
Jim was 12. In our pre-teen years I think we start to become aware of what’s going on around us and the bigger world we are a part of. The world Jim was aging into was one of rebellion against the establishment, protests against the war in Vietnam, civil rights marches and more awareness of the need for more care of our environment.
The “scene” of the early 70s, reflected in such publications as Mother Earth News, https://www.motherearthnews.com/ included interest in “off the grid” concepts for homes. Communal living and the Back to the Land farms that had begun as alternate lifestyles for the counterculture were beginning to become more mainstream. Interests in self-sufficiency and ecological responsibility were creating demand for information on how individuals could accomplish this for themselves. Early DIY instructions were shared in books or person-to-person. This shared knowledge was literally being passed through a grass-roots network. Remember, there was no internet!
This was the cultural environment that Jim was influenced by. His youthful interest in how things work was taking him down a path that would eventually lead to a drafting course in high school and then on to study architecture in college. He was intrigued by the literal power in the simplicity of passive solar design. He studied it in earnest during his tenure in college and continued to pursue information about it throughout his career. He has become quite an authority on the concepts relative to the topic.
So, many years ago, when Jim began to sketch his ideas for the house we would eventually build up on Runaway Ridge, it didn’t surprise anyone that it would be a passive solar design. I will look forward to sharing more about its specific design and systems with you in future posts. In the meantime, as the lyrics of the song from Hair repeat over and over again,
“LET THE SUNSHINE IN”!
Our house is a lot like this, with the loft being accommodated on the North wall by a higher roofline.