ABSTRACT
Crediting hippie builders as socially engaged designers seems self-contradictory. Hippie builders viewed waste as both a repressed material artifact of ecological degradation and, conversely, an underappreciated resource with which to create alternatives to postwar affluenza. Salvage provided a path to salvation through recycling and "self-build" practices. Free school theory, hippie environmentalism, communitarian idealism, and salvage bricolage came together as an integrated architectural practice in a studio offered by Van der Ryn and Campe during the 1971–1972 academic years. Graduate architecture students at Berkeley provided the research and development talent required to create a prototype for ecotectural home technology. In 1973 they erected a multistory timber scaffold supporting a patchwork of machine parts as the final project for Van der Ryn's "Natural Energy Design" studio. Built largely from lumber salvaged from a demolished barn, their "Energy Pavilion" incorporated a wind-driven electrical generator, homemade solar collectors, rainwater reservoir barrels, a greenhouse bedded with lettuce and snow peas, and a composting toilet.
