Building Departments

Interview with Nader Khalili of Cal-Earth Institute: Hesperia, California

Our biggest problem has always been building departments. And I think that this is our last stage of work. Even in small towns in India, South America, Iran, you're always dealing with this fear that they won't let you build unless you meet the code. Of course, they are there to protect life and safety. That's true. But we have already moved away from that whole idea. In most places it's a bunch of bureaucrats following the book, and their work exists because they can give you a hard time. We came to Hesperia and just decided to deal with the Building Department. To answer all their questions. We had a hard time to begin with, and then slowly they found out that we won't be going away! "These guys are serious! They want permits!" They wrote us a letter with these twenty-eight things to answer, and it was twenty-eight unanswerable questions. We waited for eighteen months. By that time they were convinced that we had gone through a lot of tests ourselves, and they are very good people themselves, very interested in this, so we went to them and said, "What should we do to have you accept our building?" They didn't know, and they left it up to us to find out! They wanted us to test every building, and perform tests in a laboratory. They're not our enemies, or bad people. There's just no way they can be flexible because it's all risk for them. There's nothing for them to gain by changing, by making things easier. But eventually we got permits to build the museum here in town, and we're getting permits for stock plans for houses. Slowly we're moving forward. And the building codes in this city are very tough. Now they are very supportive of us. This is that quest I was talking about. If you have that, you can put up with anything. The museum is now coming along - the foundation slab is already done. And they hit one little snag on the budget because of a state proposition, and they're doing some fundraising. The museum will have an entrance dome like this brick one we're in, with a water fountain in the center where youÕll sit around and get acclimated before you go in. There will be a ceramic tower which will be the tallest element. It will be glazed ceramic with Native American patterns. Then we'll use a lot of sand to build the other large spaces. You can all volunteer to help build this!