The Greater World Earthship Community — Local services in Taos

They do offer a solution for sustainable housing and living. The Earthships offer many benefits and when realized and maintained with a bit of passion, are beautiful spaces. Live and don't burden your surroundings, take what is there in abundance, reuse the refuse. All good, worth living, and a great addition to the experiment of civilization. I was a surprised that many ideas, and solutions seemed static, nothing against the wisdom of our forefathers and tried and true methods, but the name "Earthship" inspires and tickles the imagination. I would have liked to see more and more different solutions, more cutting edge technology, but I admit that I can easily be trapped in a circle of constantly updating and refining the engineering, methods, and architecture. The reason I cannot rate it 5 stars is the lack of landscape architecture. A community that tries to live in harmony (too big of a word?) with mother Earth could be more gentle, tender, and loving when it comes to "community planning". I am not proposing a formal garden or the introduction of invasives, but a conscious selection of native plants with desirable attributes. Why not spending some time to define walkways? Gentle hardscaping and xeriscaping would greatly benefit the community by adding beauty, coherence, and a more natural current in which the...

Loved the opportunity to learn about how this community of self-sustaining homes was established. I wish we would’ve stayed in one of the vacation rentals they offer overnight!

My only reason for leaving 4 stars revolves around the self-guided tour. You’re invited to tour the visitor’s center and watch a video to learn about the construction process and community that builds these incredible “vessels” (because it’s not just a home). My fiancé and I found the self-guided tour a little underwhelming. Outside of the visitor center, you don’t get to view any of the vacant rentals to see some of the amazing work they’ve done. The visitor center also stops allowing walk-ins at 3pm, which is really difficult to fit into a normal work schedule. I’d recommend just going for a guided tour on Saturday instead, but I can’t confirm that you would get to see any more of the spaces given the fact that many are occupied as either rentals or a primary residence. Recommend calling ahead to confirm… although when I called ahead for the guided tour, no one answered or...

It's awesome to stay in one of their rental earthships (I stayed in the Phoenix) but, if just passing through, the visitor center is pretty pricey for not much to see unless you're super interested in the topic or planning to build your own dwelling in this style. Small gift shop in lobby and they also allow you to view a few informational banners for free. You have to do the paid visit to access to visitor center restrooms. There's not much to see in the paid area beyond the free "lobby", but it includes a sunroom hallway with plants, which explains a little about their relationship to the earthships, a room with a sofa where you can view a short video from the earthship creator, and a hallway showing a little bit about how the earthships function. I would say skip this and just stay in one of the earthships instead as that was immensely cool to do!

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