Building Your Own

THE BROUHAHA and hubbub once raised against corporate control of American life has pretty well died down since radicalism went out of style. But the movement against the corporate ethic of mass production, mass advertising, mass consumption, and mass waste goes on in more constructive ways.

The "radical" economic view--that the size of the GNP matters little compared to the question of who is producing what--is not shouted from soapboxes, but many are quietly working to take more control of the production of their own lives, of their own health, food, transportation, education, and housing. Many women are learning to rely less on the gynecologist and the hospital during pregnancy and childbirth. Small-time gardening is booming and the produce is landing on dinner tables. Cooperative day-care centers are on the rise. Bicycles have never sold so well.

From the Ground Up brings this independence movement to housing. The two authors, the editor of The Maine Times and a physics professor at Bowdoin, have each designed and built their own house in Maine and are anxious to show others how to do it. Out to teach people that they need not take a mass-produced plain white two-story Colonial house as a home, the book contributed to the quiet movement to take responsibility for the formation of a part of people's lives away from professionals in large businesses, and to assume that responsibility themselves. But the authors are realistic--they admit that most people are afraid to face the prospect of building a house on their own. As Cole says, "They cannot take the first step toward their shelter without thinking they need an architect, an engineer, and a contractor."

My cousin, once a thin, cerebral chemical engineering student at the University of Maine, left school five years ago when he decided to teach himself how to build houses. He has learned well and has also bought farmland and taught himself how to farm. Now he looks as strong and healthy as a bear. My cousin is the best argument I've yet seen for Wing and Cole's assertion that people should teach themselves how to build, and for the larger assertion that people should learn to rely more on their own skills.

The book reads at times like a sort of "Zen and the Art of House-Building," as when Cole says, "Getting your head in shape is the first and most important construction project in any home-building plan." But overall it is concrete. It deals in ample detail with all the information needed to plan and build a house in harmony with its natural environment. It tells how to face it south to get heat from the sun's rays and how best to conserve the heat once it enters the house, how to design the outside to blend with the house's surroundings. And my cousin says it's thorough in the technical details. He should know, because he builds houses. I'm just a skinny, cerebral college student.

Wing, the physics professor, wrote the technical chapters; Cole wrote the more philosophical introductions. Wing tells you the heat value of a cord of wood. Cole tells you what he dreams about when he sits in front of a wood fire. Wing handles the physics, Cole the metaphysics.

The authors really are part of a movement which is no fiction. William Shurcliff, a research associate in physics here, used to know about every solar-heated house in America, but in the past year so many have been built that he has given up keeping track of them all. And Cole thinks that those who are not aesthetically attracted to the idea of building a house that uses its natural surroundings carefully will eventually become attracted to features like solar heating when the price of oil finally makes it worth their while to consider an alternative.

The authors do not assume that anyone who wants to build their own house also wants to grow hair all over their bodies and hunt their own food. Wing and Cole consider subjects like connecting the house with utilities, and getting a mortgage (often difficult for off-beat, self-made houses). For the inexperienced home-builder, Cole admits that "arrogance and ignorance can be great allies."

But the changes that the authors envision will take time to come, especially to cities like Cambridge. How fundamental a shift they are calling for struck me as I talked with Cole in a restaurant here. He sat, sipping a large Bloody Mary and philosophizing about how man is out of touch with nature, and how urban man's loss of the rational base of nature has led to all hs dangerous quirks. I, the urban student, slurped my cup of coffee, firing questions at him about the feasibility of what he is proposing. After the interview I went back to my temporary room in a Harvard dorm and he returned to his roots in Maine.