Concept Home Through the Four Modes of Uncivilize

Some years ago I sketched a concept home using the four modes of Uncivilize as a design lens. Both as an exercise in eco-aesthetics and a question: What happens when a house becomes a place to reconnect with the world, rather than withdraw from it?

Global Mode

A house that doesn’t behave like a smart machine. Energy comes from the sun, consumption is visible, and comfort is something you engage with, not something delivered passively. Technology is present, but scaled back to what truly matters.

When you enter the house, you're invited not just to kick off your shoes, but also to stow away your screen. A nice drawer hides the collected tech. Incoming calls are passed on to a screenless house phone. A tablet shows the “human labor equivalent” of the home’s energy use — how many work days would be needed to produce it manually. A reminder that energy is never abstract.

Local Mode

The basic systems of life — water, heat, waste — run on local, human-scale infrastructure: rainwater harvesting, helophyte filtration, compost toilets, thermal mass, earth berms, and the cooling and shading of deciduous trees. It works without relying on global supply chains.

Rainwater flows from the green roof through multi-stage natural filters. The final helophyte bed uses reeds and microbes to purify the water before it gathers in a deep freshwater pond — both reservoir and place to swim.

Domestic Mode

The home becomes a place of making and maintaining. Local materials, repairable systems, simple tools, composting loops, and small everyday rituals that keep the household alive. Domestic life replaces consumption as the central activity.

The dishwasher is gone, doing the dishes becomes a time to slow down a shared task to reconnect. The kitchen is low tech yet efficient; an over-the-sink drying rack, a small opening beside the basin sends peels and offcuts straight into the compost bucket below.

Wild Mode

As much as possible the exterior parts of the home and systems become part of the different habitats around the home. Pool and water filter are wetlands, the roof is flowery grassland, there's a permaculture garden, a food forest and some wild space. Maximizing habitats for different species.

A landscape of green, grasslands, wetlands, permaculture beds, food forest layers, and pockets of wild habitat. The house is built into the ecology rather than on top of it.

Composting and humanure heaps sit beside the greenhouse, returning nutrients to the soil and feeding the garden through slow, steady cycles.

Rainwater flows from the green roof through multi-stage natural filters. The final helophyte bed uses reeds and microbes to purify the water before it gathers in a deep freshwater pond — both reservoir and place to swim.

The shower sits below the pond’s waterline, allowing gravity to pressurize the flow. Water for washing passes through the natural filtration system; drinking water receives an added UV step.

A low-tech composting toilet: no plumbing, no energy, no sewage — just biology, carbon material, and time.

A glass façade with a deep overhang and shade from deciduous trees. Passive solar gain in winter, natural cooling in summer, and thermal mass that evens out temperature swings.

Earth packed against the structure provides natural insulation and a stable indoor climate through the seasons.

Clay jars nested inside a sand-filled outer pot. As water evaporates from the sand, it cools the inner chamber — a simple, electricity-free refrigerator.

Reduced PV surface area supported by adjustable mirrors to boost winter yield. Low-tech, repairable, and oriented toward true energy sufficiency. Excess power returns to the grid.