Mark Armfield is the owner of Armfield Design & Construction, Malibu, California.
MALIBU, California. As a boy on a bike, standing at the edge of Point Dume, gazing towards the blue horizon, Mark realized there was nowhere else to go — “This is it”. Right then he made a vow to love this land and to protect its beauty, and to one day give something back.
Fast forward a few decades and that day is now. After 25 years of working to bring environmental awareness to the construction industry, Mark takes pride in bringing to fruition only those projects that combine extreme beauty and optimum efficiency.
In the push to be environmentally responsible Mark has never forgotten about the very human need for beauty and serenity. The home as sanctuary: This is what the builder tries to create and how the family man tries to live.
Along with many environmentally advanced Malibu homes, Mark’s body of work includes:
- President – Malibu Association of Contractors
- Director of Malibu Chamber of Commerce
- Chairman – Government Affairs / City of Malibu
- Member – Malibu City Business Roundtable
- Member – City of Malibu Sustainable Building Committee
As a surfer and a builder, Mark gradually became aware of our impact on the quality of the ocean. He has committed himself to learning about what hurts the ocean and what can save the ocean from further harm.
RainCatcher
Beginning at the shore, Mark eventually started looking upstream. This lead him to the sky, to RainCatcher, to Jack Rose. Mark and Jack are studying the effects of the vast runoff from rainfall, through our cities, to the ocean. Together, right here in Malibu, they are designing prototypes for residential rainwater harvesting and storm-water management. This work is their contribution to future generations of Californians.
California RainCatcher houses will collect and store tens of thousands of gallons of fresh rainwater each year during the rainy season and then use this precious resource for landscaping during the long dry season. By the middle of the century, the fulfillment of this design will cut in half the amount of water Southern California must import every year. See photos of completed
projects in the Central Coast region of California by a landscape design company called Earthcraft Landscape Design.
This is a big, slow process that will yield great dividends a half century from now for everyone in California. But many places in the world need the water from RainCatchers right now, so: In conjunction with their local projects, Mark and Jack are bringing the same rain catching technologies to places like Africa and India so that millions of people worldwide will benefit today by not having to suffer and die from water borne diseases.
From the same Point Dume office where they imagine and construct beautiful and brilliant Malibu homes, Mark and Jack create RainCatchers for schoolhouses in Africa. Current projects include two UN Farm Schools for 700 AIDS orphans in Western Kenya.
Jack Rose, founder of RainCatcher.
Jack Rose, Raincatcher: I grew up along the coast of California with a mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, in my back yard — surfing, climbing, skiing — Living in a place where every year, like clockwork, moisture would float in from the Pacific, hit the Sierra, and drop an abundance of rain and snow. These same mountains would later provide the RainCatcher model for my current work.
If I had to give myself a job description it would be: inventor/explorer/friend.
Jack Rose Design Studio — I design interesting houses in all the hideaway places up and down California. Having grown up in a dry climate, rain falling has always been alluring for me. While living on the north shore of Kauai I began catching and drinking rain. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. A couple years later, while living on the rainy Mendocino coast, I continued catching an abundance of delicious rain. So, one day, while enjoying a glass of water-from-heaven I suddenly realized that over a billion people around the world couldn’t participate in this daily ritual that I take for granted. As a designer I gave myself the challenge to come up with a simple, cheap way for all who are chronically thirsty to receive clean, safe drinking water direct from the sky. RainCatcher was born. The purpose and goal: H2O 4 Every 1.
Reversal-of-fortune
The value of rain received, rather than rejected, is immeasurable.
Architecture, up until now, is based on the premise that “Water is the enemy” — we must shed it and get rid of it as fast as possible. Residential, commercial, industrial and municipal architects and planners all adhere to this belief.
At the same time, modern culture has been relentless in promoting this attitude. Turn to the weather on radio or TV and we are constantly told: “It’s going to be a bad day”. . . because there’s a chance of rain. And if it isn’t a bad day here we are shown all the places where it is going to be ‘miserable’, because of rain — Boston, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, you name it.
Generations have been taught to fear nature, to loathe the rain, to complain each time the garden gets watered. None of this rings true. As children we loved the rain. When we weren’t inside playing board games and making forts we were outside discovering new lakes where bean fields used to be — building Tom Sawyer rafts and having big adventures.
A primary purpose of RainCatcher is to sing praise and gratitude for weather — to instigate an attitude shift from “rain is bad, let’s get rid of it” to “rain is a blessing, let’s catch it and treasure it.” When enough of us do this, countless people around the world will experience a Reversal-of-Fortune. Water is as precious a resource as oil. Instead of tossing it aside, one day we will collect it from the roofs of every home and business structure and put it to good use.
As everyone in Africa knows, “WATER IS LIFE”. . .
The purpose and goal of RainCatcher is: H2O 4 Every 1
Jack Rose and Mark Armfield
After handling the need for clean, uncontaminated drinking water, the next big issue is livelihood. The RainCatcher Peru project combines both.
There are 130,000 family coffee farms scattered throughout the Peruvian Andes. KC O’Keefe of Jungle-Tech is helping some of these independent growers to raise the quality of their coffee beans and increase the value of the finished product to be sold on the world market. You can read the whole story on jungle-tech.com. KC and I are designing a RainCatcher system to create a supply of clean water for both coffee production and drinking water. We plan to use his solar dryer structures to catch rain and channel the water into storage bags developed by International Development Enterprises. Go to ideorg.org to read about this ‘breakthrough’ in rainwater harvesting. Once at there, click “Tech Gallery”, then “Rainwater Harvesting” to read about and see the water storage bag in use in Bangladesh. With this product we can do several demonstration projects throught the provinces of Peru. Local growers will help build a RainCatcher/Solar Dryer coffee production system and then be able to take the neccessary materials back home to set up their own. These systems are low cost, low tech, non-mechanical, non-electric solutions for rural farming communities. Our aim is to have these operating on a thousand farms by the end of 2006.
The subtitle for Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point reads: “How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”. Our project falls into this category. Getting a thousand growers set up and producing better coffee will lead to information and materials spreading to the rest of the 130,000 farms. If growers are able to improve the quality of their finished beans, the return on their efforts will double, eventually affecting one million people who work on the small, independent coffee farms of Peru.
After catching and storing the rainwater, the next chore is cleaning it for absolute safe drinking. Another key person in this story is a man by the name of Humphrey Blackburn. He and his company, Blue Future Filters, have developed the “Slow Sand Filter”, a filter with no moving parts that requires no maintenance or electricity and provides clean water for decades. It removes all the diseases that spread in undeveloped regions through contaminated water sources. Humphrey just received contracts to ship a thousand filters to the tsunami areas and seven hundred to Iraq. The good news is rainwater can be caught and stored and run through these filters and, if rainwater supplies dry up between rains, any old river or stream water can be passed through the slow sand filter. Now we always have a back-up during long dry spells.
Read more: Andes, Blue Future Filters, coffee, farms, Humphrey Blackburn, Iraq, Jungle Tech, Peru, slow sand filter, solar, South America, tsunami
Recently, the World Health Organization estimated that 5 million people die annually from water-borne diseases. The Big Question: How can we help to bring safe, clean drinking water to the billions of people around the world who are chronically thirsty? In many places, once the rain hits the ground it becomes too contaminated to use. The challenge, therefore, is to catch the water before it touches the ground and store enough of it to last throughout the long dry season.
The rainwater that falls from the sky is unlimited — why should our capacity to catch, store and use it be limited? We are preparing for a second trip to Africa to catch rain. My first trip took me to South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania in April of 2004. I traveled through Africa with a group headed by Vickie Butcher, called Water for Children Africa. Starting in San Diego, California, our first stop was Johannesburg, South Africa where we spent a week visiting settlements and hospitals delivering supplies for mothers and children with HIV/Aids. Most of these sites will be receiving RainCatchers on future trips. Then we visited Kenya and Tanzania, setting up water storage tanks to provide clean drinking water for schools in the Mua Hills north of Nairobi.
Many people, back in the States and in Africa, contributed time, creativity and resources to make this work possible. Every step along the way we were received with open arms and high hopes. Securing a reliable source of clean water is the first order of business. Everywhere we went I was invited to travel out to rural schools, orphanages, farms and clinics to design RainCatchers. As I toured a wide variety of locations and situations another need became obvious: Shade! After the rain comes the hot sun, then the big RainCatcher tent becomes a giant parasol, providing shaded gathering places. In most poor areas there are no trees, no shelter from the sun. People will be able to have a clean drink of water and a little bit of shade. While in Africa I worked with suppliers to carry the necessary tanks and tents for rainwater harvesting so that from America we can raise funds and, through email, purchase more RainCatchers and have them transported to new locations. These will be set up by the truck drivers who deliver the tanks. The networks are already well established. An eager workforce awaits our green light.
The beauty, color and texture of Africa is indescribable, the people as friendly and open as I have ever met. Each country is very distinct from the others. South Africa is a perfect home base , reminds me of California, but more European. Very cosmopolitan, diverse, and hopeful in the face of extreme adversity. Remember, this ancient place is home to a ten year old democracy. The window for change is right now. Progressive ideas have a chance to bloom here. It is exciting to be a part of a story so historically rich and also open to advancement.
I wrote this story from an Internet cafe in Arusha, Tanzania, on the high plains near Kilimanjaro. After traveling to the edge of the earth I found myself in the middle of the world, meeting a novel’s worth of interesting characters from everywhere. The equatorial highlands of East Africa are tropical at 6000ft elevation, blending the best of mountains and jungle. It is truly a world crossroads, a wild west with Marco Polos and Maasai and every imaginable color and culture, all blended together.
The purpose of upcoming travel to Africa, along with actually setting up RainCatchers, is to document the installation process and display it on the Internet so people in need of safe drinking water all around the world can learn how to make their own. Built in a day, using local materials, the RainCatcher will become an immediate source of drinking water. Overnight, with the first rains, a remedy for the age old problem of inadequate and dangerous water supplies can be implemented. While it may take years and decades, if ever, for new dams and delivery infrastructure to arrive on the scene, people can begin today to develop their own pure water supply, at very little expense, with no bureaucratic or logistical road blocks.
Let it rain.
Read more: Africa, AIDS, Arusha, California, clinics, disease, farms, hospitals, Johannesburg, Kenya, Kilimanjaro, Maasi, Mua Hills, Nairobi, orphanages, San Diego, schools, shade, South Africa, Tanzania, tents, Vickie Butcher, Water For Children Africa, water tanks, World Health Organization
