Latin America’s first Earthship hotel under construction in Uruguay

Latin America’s first totally sustainable school in Uruguay an Earthship

Michael Reynolds and his team have been in Uruguay before to build Latin America’s first sustainable public school in the coastal village of Jaureguiberry back in 2016.

One of Earthship’s most well-known methods is using recycled tyres for foundation and walls. Each tyre is filled with earth, which is rammed by hand to compact it. This creates a very dense wall with high thermal mass, which helps to heat in winter and cool in summer. Another unique part of this construction is using aluminum cans and glass bottles as bricks to build walls.

For further heating, Earthships are outfitted with a greenhouse facing toward the sun that can both grow food and help heat the buildings in cooler months. Many of those who have been within one of these unique buildings describe the wonderful sensation of living amongst tropical plants in the greenhouse year-round. Some Earthship greenhouses even have fishponds.

Michael Reynolds developed Earthship as a result of trial and error over the course of 40 years. Back in 1972, he experimented with his now infamous beer-can home. After graduating with an architecture degree, Reynolds was concerned with the amount of trash mounting in the world. He wanted to reinvent a kind of architecture that both helps to recycle trash and creative beautiful, functional spaces.

Reynolds and his team have been all around the world building Earthships for both private clients and public entities. The construction team typically comes for one month and hosts an academy that draws students from around the world who want to learn this method of building.