Gaviotas Creates Topian Technologies

“Appropriate technologies” are designed with special consideration for the environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economical aspects of the community they are intended for. These technologies are created with a few crucial design constraints: affordability, durability, accessibility, ease of use.
    The Gaviotas community in Columbia have successfully invented wind turbines, solar collectors, water purifiers, soil free hydroponic systems, and simple, efficient pumps in order to bring basic amenities and services to the people of the llanos. Rather than considering their designs “Utopian,” Paolo Lugari (founder of Gaviotas) insists, “Utopia literally means no place. We call Gaviotas topia, because its real.”
    In the expansive plains east of the capital city of Bogotá, the indigenous Guahibo Indians and colonists of the area can only access to contaminated surface waters and live 16 hours from the nearest city with no paved roads to get there. Lacking fundamental services, Paolo Lugari brought together doctors, engineers, and experts from the Universidad de Bogotá and all over Latin and Central America to create devices to allow access to clean drinking water through pumping and purification.
    To access the pure water in natural underground reservoirs, a mechanical engineer Alonso Gutiérrez invented a sleeve pump. By lifting a lightweight sleeve rather than the inner piston, the new pump didn’t require the application of force against atmospheric pressure, thus creating the opportunity to draw water from deep within the ground. The sleeve was light enough for a child to lift. Another engineer Luis Robles and some local children then developed an idea to attach the pump to a seesaw. As part of the Columbian government’s Agua Para Todos (Water for Everyone) program, this Gaviotan technology reached over 600 llanero villages.

    During the 80’s, Gaviotans also designed a new hospital using solar technology to serve themselves and llaneros in surrounding villages. An interesting technology is this solar kitchen used in the hospital.

The kitchen uses low-viscosity cottonseed oil inside piping heated by the sun to heat pressure cookers. Sunlight superheats the oil which is then sucked into a holding tank on the roof by a heat siphon. A 40 watt micro pump run on batteries charged by photovoltaic cells is manually turned on, forcing the hot cottonseed oil through coils that loop around stainless steel pressure cookers and then return to the roof to re heat. Insulation of the tank allows the system to run 24 hours a day. Leftover charge in the battery can illuminate the rest of the hospital for the night. This is an example of a technology that may be too complicated and expensive to replicate for individual homes, but is perfect for public facilities like hospitals which serve most of the surrounding peoples.
    Gaviotan engineers also brought their technologies out of the llanos and into the cities to help urban populations. Engineers trained street kids to help create hydroponic gardens on rooftops. The harvest leftovers were bountiful enough to supply a women’s cooperative and a reigonal grocery chain.
    Gaviotas is an real example of the usefulness of appropriate technologies. It worked for Gaviotan engineers because the inventors refused to patent their products. This allowed the designs to be used and shared by those who needed them.

Here is a Solar Kettle, designed to purify water through by boiling it and then cooling it to a palatable temperature.




From: Gaviotas; A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman