Teenager turns his California dreaming into reality

But California has also carved out a reputation as a place with an environmentally-friendly conscience, and one North Yorkshire teenager is about to find out first hand just how green the Golden State really is.

Ansel Darrell is due to embark on a year-long apprenticeship in the Mojave Desert with the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, which has developed pioneering building techniques to create settlements for some of the world's poorest communities by using natural resources.

The methods developed by the institute, which is dubbed Cal-Earth, use sand bags filled with earth, rock and rubble found near to where the settlements are being constructed.

These are then arranged in layers or long coils with strands of barbed wire placed between them to act as both mortar and reinforcement. The buildings incorporate arches, domes and vaults to strengthen the structure.

The 16-year-old from Aislaby, near Pickering, is due to fly out to the West Coast of America in February next year to embark on the 12-month programme of studies, which will cost between 5,000 and 6,000.

Ansel, who will celebrate his 17th birthday in January, said: "It really is an opportunity of a lifetime, and I can't wait to go across. Seeing as American students do not finish college until they are 18, I'm one of the youngest people to go on the year-long course.

"The techniques which are used by Cal-Earth are helping communities which have been hit by disasters or are in extreme poverty. It will be a privilege to learn about the methods and try and help out in the future."

The building technique developed by Cal-Earth has been used across the globe, including the relief effort to help Haiti following January's earthquake, which was the worst to hit the country in two centuries.

And NASA has also expressed interest in adapting the construction techniques if lunar settlements ever become a reality.

Ansel hopes to join one of the teams of workers employed by Cal-Earth around the world, although his ultimate ambition is to create a holiday park in Britain using the construction techniques and the institute's environmentally-friendly ethos.

Parents John and Stacey are helping him finance the trip, although the teenager has also embarked on a fundraising drive himself.

He is helping to run the bike hire department at Forest Holidays Keldy Cabins at Cropton on the edge of the North York Moors National Park, and has set up a business producing eco-friendly cards.

The designs, which are printed in vegetable-based inks on recycled card featuring his own photographs, are being sold on the internet.

Ansel, who has a younger brother, Seren, 14, and an older sister, Kyla, 22, finished his studies at the end of the last academic year – and admits that his education has been somewhat left-field.

Until the age of 14, he was a student at a North Yorkshire school based on the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, who founded his first venture in Germany in 1919.

While many of the pupils sit GCSEs and A-levels, they also experience an unconventional education in which hands-on learning through activities such as gardening sit alongside classroom lessons.

Ansel then completed his studies at The Stables Project in York, an independent, non-profit-making arts and education initiative.

He said: "I have been interested in building since I was young, and this will allow me to follow something of a childhood dream."

The range of cards which Ansel has designed are available to buy online at forestgalleries.com.

Architect with a natural ambition

The origins of Cal-Earth date back to the mid-1970s when an architect called Nader Khalili decided to close his offices in Los Angeles and Tehran at the height of a successful career.

He decided to abandon traditional constructional techniques and instead pursue a far more radical building design centred on using the earth's natural resources.

He launched The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, or Cal-Earth, in 1991. He died at the age of 72 in 2008, but his philosophy has continued.

Cal-Earth apprentices are teaching and building the sandbag-based shelters pioneered by their founder in countries including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Iran, India, Mexico, Chile and Tibet.