RE Trulli houses (trulli = plural / trullo = singular) ~ dwellings designed to double as water catchment structures

The architectural design of these little houses is reminiscent of a beehive shape.

The gist of the history of Trulli houses in the Puglia region of Southern Italy is that, at some moment, way back in the past, there was an enactment that stands in infamy; a governor levied a crippling water tax on all the inhabitants in this region of Southern Italy where water and rainfall is scarce.

Then, out of outrage at this exorbitant tax was born this beehive-looking residence, designed to be its own water catchment brilliance…; The outside walls are shaped and curved with very small step terraces designed as a highly efficient water catchment mechanism. Now the governor could stuff his stupid tax..; the People had found a way to harvest the water themselves.

When we were in the region we got to stay in one of these. It’s a very pleasing space, like a cob house, or adobe.

In October 2021 California Governor Gavin Newsom expanded his drought emergency declaration to include almost every County in California; “Following the second driest year on record and with near record low storage in California’s largest reservoirs..”

That’s what got me thinking about what a bunch of people historically co-creatively burst forth with (under duress) in this one region of Italy. Here we are with a Governor’s Proclamation yet still, the the reality of that barely whispers into people’s everyday lives as being “real” or dire, or worthy of radical engagement. I mean, couldn’t we be building prototype water catchment house {inherently “tiny” houses/small footprint} “villages”…. in all sorts of cool locations, urban and rural? And we could incorporate “Clivus Multrum” compost toilet technology in this 21st century state of the art Cal-Village model, since that technology already passed the legislature (after YEARS of trying).
[see NYC Bronx Zoo brilliant Clivus Multrum installation: https://youtu.be/w4IhTdG-qfc ].

Considering that we now have a state of drought emergency across the State… maybe, under such powers, we have the ability institutionally to suspend building code.. Nothing to stop us building a Trulli village.. a cluster of (multiple clusters of) water catchment houses… an integral part of paradigm-shifting tiny houses/ housing stock for our Counties, in our State.

And just as the Santa Cruz Tannery always has a waiting list of people who want to live in that very particular configuration, there are so many permaculture-spirited people, folk who would be thrilled to live in an intentional Village of Trulli water catchment houses.

Strikes me, if China could build a Covid hospital for thousands of patients in a week, how swiftly could we deliver such prototypes into our physical plane reality in the eleventh hour, toward net zero in the State of California

Btw the Santa Cruz Tannery, artists’ live-work studio complex, they said it could never be built there…; due to the site being a former leather-tanning superfund toxic waste site.. But a bunch of determined folk in Santa Cruz moved mountains to make this creative affordable housing complex happen. The layers and layers of complexity that it took to deliver The Tannery..; the remediation of the land, the design of the residence building so that it could withstand a major 100 year flooding of the river…etc etc., was daunting to behold but there it stands today, a testament to what is possible when the vision is strong.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/10/19/governor-newsom-expands-drought-emergency-statewide-urges-californians-to-redouble-water-conservation-efforts/