Towards the planet’s populace set-to double inside 50 years, individuals will in the near future must survive property in the past believed unlivable. He told a group of researchers, agronomists, designers, and medical professionals that he considered they had about three alternatives for in which to grow a special community: burn along the Colombian Amazon, perform the same to Este Choco, the massive rainforest on Colombia’s west shore, or preseve the new woods and you will follow him so you’re able to los llanos, brand new bare plains eastern of your Andes. Within the 1971, Lugari staked a claim to 25,000 miles of your own llanos, where in fact the category started to changes the fresh new bad earth during the Colombia with the miraculous people of Gaviotas.
Gaviotas is actually a compound off neat light cottages having laminated roofs, shady by mango trees and you will bougainvillea. The fresh air try gardenia-scented; yellow warblers and you may amazing scarlet tanagers sing in the woods. Discover invitees domiciles, a beneficial refectory, commissary, and you may college or university. Across a field horses graze facing a conference hallway with a radically vaulted roof. The aerodynamic physical appearance is echoed from the groups out-of brightly decorated nearest and dearest dwellings, whose pitched roofs try studded with solar panels. Solar h2o heating possibilities set-up at Gaviotas now heat drinking water inside the newest president’s palace into the Bogota, plus the 3 largest social houses developments – that having seven,five hundred systems – within the Bogota and you can Medellin. From the Clinica San Pedro Claver, one of several state’s biggest healthcare facilities, Gaviotas is establishing just solar power water heaters, however, boilers, coaxing out-of Bogota’s cloudy climate heat good enough scorching so you’re able to sterilize tool around the clock.
Even when Gaviotas parents has her kitchens, they primarily consume in the wild-air dining area. A hundred-together with people assemble at a lot of time tables to possess lentil soup, salad, grain, meat-and-potato stew, cassava, and you may papaya juice. Vegetables, beef, pork, and fish are built right here.
Personalized Windmill Fuel
Bright aluminum sunflowers signal the fresh approach to Gaviotas. Even though this warm basic drifts atop a massive subterranean lake, Indians and you can very early settlers needed to haul liquids out-of dirty channels. Jorge Zapp, head of your mechanized technology service out-of Bogota’s Universidad de Los Andes, studied 58 different varieties of windmills ahead of carrying out a custom made model so you can push the newest llanos. The effect is a concise unit consider scarcely 100 weight, its knife tips contoured eg plane wings in order to trap soft equatorial breezes.
Gaviotas given a way to package a warm society regarding the surface right up, instead of based on development set up getting north climates. «Once we transfer choices in the All of us otherwise European countries,» told you Lugari, creator regarding Gaviotas, «i and additionally transfer their problems.»
Usually Gaviotas technicians has Lover Whirl-virasto actually strung tens of thousands of brand new windmills across the Colombia – in some places gaviotas is the local keyword to have windmill. As the Gaviotas will not patent innovations, preferring to express them easily, the proper execution could have been duplicated regarding Main The united states to Chile.
Strength arises from a low-lead turbine running on a flow, except from the brief inactive year, if it’s backed up because of the an excellent diesel creator. «During the 24 decades we’ve read to cover seventy percent your food and energy needs,» says Gonalo Bernal, manager out of Gaviotas. «The new woods i bush more compensate for one greenhouse gases i make. Can you imagine other industry lived eg united states.»
Colombia’s Model Town
Gaviotas first started given that a set of experts, students, and laborers discussing car, bedding, dinners, attire – and you may ilies joined him or her and a permanent colony having private domiciles emerged. Bodies is actually from the consensus and you can unwritten guidelines. So you can restriction public ailment, alcoholic drinks is actually restricted so you’re able to land. In preserving animals, animals and you may firearms are banished. A need for police, jail, otherwise home tresses has never developed. Anybody who violates protocol, instance an excellent storekeeper which has just acknowledge in order to overcharging, is actually ostracized of the community up to his financial obligation is reduced. Loafers are not tolerated, but with wages above the Colombian minimum-wage, along with free food, medical care, schools, and you may housing, loafing is not difficulty.