The bulk of architecture evident in 1975 centered on one major theme, the environment. Although there were other topics that surfaced throughout the year, they were minor ones compared to how often issues dealing with the environment showed up. More specifically, two particular themes were evident, recycling and the use of natural energy.

Some may ask why the sudden interest in the environment? The answer is simple; looking back a couple of years an energy crisis crippled the nation in October of 1973. People not only did this to aid nature, moreover people wanted to be more independent in case future energy crises should arise.

In addition to just reusing old building materials, recycling was executed on a large scale by renovating

Later on in the year, a barn built with recycled materials was featured. The new barn was built on a plot of land that was long left abandoned. It used old wood from other old barns for its walls, roof and siding. Other barns that year did not go to that extreme of building an entirely new barn from old materials. Rather, most of them were just renovated. In various articles in the same year four barns were renovated into a house, a studio, a guest cottage, and a dance studio.

There were of course different styles of housing employed that year. But what most people focused on were barns, and ingeniously designed vertical houses that provided large amounts of living space on small plots of land. Other than that, a few horizontal houses were built to allow more area for solar energy panels.

old buildings instead of knocking them down and building from scratch. Besides recycling, steps were taken in the creative and high-tech arenas to permit the use of natural energy. As mentioned before, these two issues were not the only ones that were covered during the year, but they were by far given the most exposure.

Barns were not the only buildings renovated, in addition the same owners who transformed one of the barns into a dance studio renovated a gardener's cottage into an art studio. (July 50) One couple went as far as to totally renovate an old inn into a weekend house by themselves with help from a local contractor for major jobs. However, in that particular project, it was not really a renovation at all, they merely transformed the building into the original state it was in almost 200 years ago. (July 46)

Renovating existing structures and recycling materials is one way to help the environment; there is however

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Approximate Word count = 1164
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)