Flagship Europe somehow became the research and development department of Earthship Europe. But in the same time it is a title an actual building can hold for a while for getting nearest to the flagship criteria.

The idea was a contribution of Earthship Sweden to Earthship Europe.

Research

First we aim to gather people who are researching self sustainable building based on earthship concepts and related concepts to share their findings within Flagship Europe of one of its national representatives like Flagship Belgium of Flagship Sweden.

In this way all those doing research will be saving time because of the sharing of what others have found. It is in a way centralising information contributed freely by those who researched it, with others who are contributing themselves.

Research is done on topics like:

• insulation, thermal mass, moist problems
• earthship, sandbag, cob , straw bale and other building methods, techniques and materials used
• research on perfomance of existing earthships, sandbag, straw bale and other kinds of self sustainable buildings in Europe
• ancient building methods, techniques and materials used
• implementing nature in designing
• energy production
• water management
• natural food production systems
• ....

Some of the goals in our research are:

• eliminate industrial newly produced materials as far as possible
• make it Low Tech and Do It Yourself as much as possible
• reuse of local available natural and waste materials
• make the building perform optimal within the climate it is placed
• keep the costs of building low

Design

The next logical step within Flagship Europe is to see how all the research done can contribute in optimal self sustainable building within its environment.

Whether this means improving or adapting an existing model or designing a whole new model based on the same concepts is determined by the climatic circumstances of where it needs to be build.

A first step in design is the Euro model (by Flagship Belgium). This is a Global Model adapted to solve most European issues in earthships already build here.

The design is based on inventerising the problems, causes and performance of 3 European earthships: Earthship Brighton, Earthship Zwolle and Earthship Fife. It is an experimental model to test if the offered solutions will work.

A second step in design is the Straw ship (by Flagship Sweden). This is a model implementing earthship concepts in a unique way for the Scandinavian climate. Integrating earthship techniques with those of straw bale building and there by reducing cost for insulation dramaticly.

And as further research will be done on the experimental designs once build, probably more adapdations and new designs will be needed.

Title

The best implementation of any building in a given European country where there is a national Flagship group can be awarded the title Flagship Country Name.

The building that best meets the criteria of Flagship will be given this title. The national Flagship group are the ones to decide what building in their country at any given moment approaches those criteria the best. So the ttle can move from one building to another.