 |
Photo by Reed Hutchinson UCLA
Photographic Services
Professor Scott Bartchy designed his environment-friendly
home in Ventura County and affectionately dubbed it “the
Earthship.”
|
he does things religiously
Living in solar comfort
BY SANDY SIEGEL
UCLA Today
For Scott Bartchy, professor of Christian origins and the history
of religion, having the Center for the Study of Religion on campus
makes perfect sense. After all, religion is taught in numerous courses,
from philosophy to anthropology to art.
But in the early ’90s, it was a tough sell. “The dean
of humanities challenged us to show that there really was a need
for such a center,” Bartchy said.
So Bartchy — who joined the history department in 1980 as
a visiting professor and became full-time in 1989 — and a
small committee of faculty members programmed a variety of events
on religious topics.
For five years, “we were doing all this on practically no
money,” Bartchy said. But when a new dean arrived, “we
thought it was time to make our case.” Especially when a database
search turned up 286 religion-themed dissertations that had been
written in 28 departments between 1977 and 1995.
The Center for the Study of Religion was launched soon after,
in 1995, to give students and faculty members doing religious research
the opportunity to connect with each other and the public, as well
as with outside scholars, through high-level academic conferences.
Bartchy, director of the center since 1997, is right at home there.
With a master of divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D.
in the study of religion from Harvard University, he spent most
of the ’70s in Germany heading the Institut zur Erforschung
des Urchristentum (Institute for the Study of Christianity) while
also teaching the New Testament at the University of Tubingen.
But the center isn’t the professor’s only “divine”
creation. He takes great pride in the unique, self-designed home
he shares with his wife, Nancy Breuer. Dubbed the “Earthship,”
and based on the environment-friendly principles of architect Michael
Reynolds, the two-tiered, 3,600-square-foot concrete structure is
built against the hills in Ventura County.
“The idea is to have as much of the house as possible in
contact with the earth,” Bartchy said. “It picks up
the ambient temperature of the earth, which up there is about 59
degrees.”
And the home’s south/southeast angle creates “passive
solar energy,” allowing the floor-to-ceiling windows to take
maximum advantage of the sun. Despite temperatures ranging from
26 degrees in winter to 112 in summer, “the house has never
been warmer than 88 or cooler than 66,” Bartchy said. “That’s
without one penny spent on fossil fuel.”
With his dream house built and the center established, Bartchy
wouldn’t mind making one other fantasy a reality: a religious-studies
department at UCLA.
“The Center for the Study of Religion proves on a weekly
basis that we have people in a variety of departments studying the
things you might call religious,” he said. With a department
of religious studies, “we would have a budget, and we could
call in scholars and very distinguished people who might not fit
into the agenda of any particular department.”
|
