Malaga, Spain
Mission Title: The Greenhouse Affect – Forma Libre Eco-Housing
Mission By: Richard Brown, Michael Crozier
Mission Finished on Date: 17-06-2008
SCRIPT
- Go to Malaga and Marbella and investigate these new eco
- houses.
- Call Forma Libre and behave like a tourist looking for a holiday accommodation. Record your conversation and how they answer your questions and concerns.
- Compare it the with the hyper
- touristy world of the Spanish coast, Interview people living in the villas and try to understand their point of view and wishes.
- How do the locals feel about these new houses, try to ask in the neighborhood around the development, as you’ll have people who’ve at least seen them. Ask if they know about the speed of their building or the price? Do they think this is for real or just another ploy to attract wealthy tourists to an oversaturated tourist market?
- Talk to Moises Alvarez Yela, ask him about how he pulls this rather amazing feat of speead, politics, and price off? Feel him out, is he for real or just interested in making money? Are these mutually exclusive? Have him tell you not only how he does it, but why he’s doing it in Malaga? Who does he expect his clients to be?
TRAVEL BAG
Is ecotourism a viable route for coastal development?
The usual lackadaisical haze of British tourists whiling away retirement in apartment blocks in Malaga and Marbella has been upset by a rather provocative project. Most of the retirees and sun-worshippers who come to the Costa del Sol would like to think about nothing harder than pints at the bar and either getting a nice tan or avoiding skin cancer. But a local architect has been erecting houses lately that have made more than a few of the potential buyers interested. Built in two weeks for around 900 euro per a square meter, one might jump to the conclusion that these new buildings were ramshackle condos about as environmentally sound as a toxic waste dump. Invented by architect Moises Alvarez Yela from Madrid, these instant houses, called Forma Libre, are actually eco-friendly and sustainable, or at least as the advertisements claim.
The houses are delightfully wacky, something in between the Flintstones and Gaudì, but the website on the other hand, does look a bit sleazy, like a hard sell for the National Geographic set, down to the happy nuclear family smirking at you from above the toll free number and the array of wild animals. The price, politics, and speed combo, seems to good to be true, find out if it is.
