Gaviotas

Gaviotas is an ecovillage located in the llanos of the Colombian department of Vichada. It was founded in 1971 by Paolo Lugari who assembled a group of engineers and scientists in an attempt to create a mode of sustainable living in one of the least hospitable political and geographical climates in South America.

The community has produced a number of inventions and innovations over the years - notably including a children's seesaw that drives a water pump and a "distinctive 'sunflower' design" windmill that is well-suited to the plains in Colombia. Lugari notes that social experiments cannot simply import solutions from temperate climates. Gaviotas has made it a goal to always engineer solutions specific to the problems the community will be facing personally (Gaviotas Rising 1994).

Since already-existing solutions are often very costly to adapt, Gaviotas' innovations are often simple changes to a means of production that make otherwise expensive products available at affordable prices. One of the most widespread Gaviotas developments is a water pump that can tap aquifers six times as deep as conventional pumps with less effort being expended. While existing pumps in the region raised and lowered a heavy piston in a pipe, the Gaviotas engineers created pumps that leave the piston in place and instead lift and lower a cheap, light PVC sleeve around the piston (Weisman 1995).

When leading solar hot water panel manufacturers explained the expenses and complicated manufacture of panels efficient enough to collect sunlight in the often overcast weather of the llanos, the Gaviotas engineers crafted homemade solar water-heating panels out of cheap building materials that were better suited to the peculiar climate of the region. The ecovillage also creates some of its own building materials like a unique form of quickcrete brick made with the dirt of the region.

In the spring of 1998, Alan Weisman, the author of the book Gaviotas came and visited the students of Communications Arts High School in San Antonio, Texas, in what would later become known as 'Gaviotas Day.'

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Wikipedia