Greening The Cube: 100-Mile Housing is a feature length documentary film that follows the efforts of green-builders Pete Matheson and Sean Sands as they strive to imagine and construct homes that are affordable, habitable, ethical, and environmentally responsible- in a word, sustainable.
Tracing the contrasting origins of these two unique builders, the diversity of design and near limitless possibilities for experimental housing is explored through their personal histories and the homes they have created. Taking inspiration from the local-food treatise The 100 Mile Diet, a concept for '100 Mile Housing,' localized solutions for house and home, begins to take shape in the backwoods of Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada.
With appearances made by author JB MacKinnon (co-author of The 100-Mile Diet), Professor William Rees (Ecological Footprint Analysis), and other proponents of sustainable living, a case for experimental building and whole-systems solutions to the sustainability question is taken from the wilderness out...
Combining integrated approaches to food production, meeting energy needs, responsible management of the waste stream, and other considerations pertinent to our homes and lifestyles, the extremes gone to by the featured builders serve as a counterpoint, a challenge to modern western consumerism. Ultimately, the lifestyle and movement documented poses but one question; what kind of future will you build?
Artist’s Statement
Like many people, I have become keenly aware that we cannot carry on living the over-consumptive, wasteful lifestyles that we have been groomed and encouraged to lead. It was with a major overhaul, a drastic remodel in mind, that Theme Room Films took shape, and that the concept for Greening the Cube: 100-Mile Housing took seed; our plan was to explore and document the efforts of people not so unlike us that are living with a localized focus amidst all the complexity of our modern, ‘globalized’ world.
What prompted me to undertake the telling of this story are the people I have been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of over the past two years. They are builders both alternative and conventional, from builders of innovative, natural homes, to builders of rich, vibrant communities. Builders of ecological economies, and builders of vision, to builders of urban oases found amongst sky-scraped sight-lines.
I hope they will serve as an inspiration for you, too, and that whatever you take away from the stories and practices documented in this film will enrich your experience in your own built and evolving environment- whether in housing, community, energy use or the like, there is always room for change, and ideally, room too, for improvement.
–Tyler Austin Bradley
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