- Beyond Sustainability - The Case for Regenerative Design
- Understanding Place - Climate, Site, and Solar Geometry
- The Six Integrated Systems - An Overview
- Building with the Earth—Natural Materials
- Passive Solar Design - Heating and Cooling Without Machines
- Off-Grid Energy Systems - Power from the Sun
- Water - Catching, Storing, and Cycling
- Liquid Waste Treatment - Botanical Systems
- Food Systems—Buildings That Feed
- Community Design - Scaling Up
- The Integrated Design Process
- Appendix A: Glossary of Key Terms
- Appendix B: The Pangea Textbook Series
- Appendix C: Key Design Principles at a Glance
- The Regenerative Community Vision
- Site Assessment and Land Reading
- Land Use Law and Legal Frameworks
- Master Planning for Regenerative Communities
- Infrastructure Systems Integration
- Housing Typologies and Density Design
- Community Governance Structures
- Economic Models for Community Development
- Phased Development Strategy
- Community Resilience and Long-Term Stewardship
- Appendix A: Legal Entity Comparison Chart
- Appendix B: Community Design Checklist
- Appendix C: Glossary of Community Development Terms
The tire wall is the primary structural system of the Earthship model and the most widely used natural building system in Pangea’s work. It is elegant in its simplicity: recycled automobile tires, which would otherwise end up in landfills or tire fires, are filled with compacted earth and stacked in a running bond pattern (like bricks) to form the building’s primary bearing walls. The process of filling a tire, called pounding, involves placing the tire on a rubber mat, shoveling earth into it, and then using a sledgehammer to compact the earth until the tire is completely full and has bulged out at the sides into a slightly trapezoidal shape. A fully pounded tire typically weighs between 135 and 180 kilograms (300 to 400 pounds) and, once stacked in a wall, is virtually indestructible. The resulting wall is also inherently fire-resistant, since the rubber of the tire is sealed within…