Meet Roan & Ivy, a vibrant couple living in neighboring tiny homes on their off-grid property in New Mexico. They bought their 2 acres and built both the earthbag home & shed tiny house for under $15k. Their alternative, simple lifestyle enables them to live frugally on their own terms while focusing on their passions, … Read more
Ex-rocket scientist, Kristina Barile, from Harvard and MIT now builds natural living structures and permaculture farms in Panama. She is an expert in building mud homes who offers workshops and videos to help people embrace natural building technologies and live off the grid. On her Instagram account, Kristina posted a video explaining the difference between … Read more
A climate-resilient city can predict, withstand and recover from climate-related hazards — storms, heatwaves, floods — while maintaining its essential functions and keeping its population safe. Key attributes include a robust infrastructure, renewable energy integration, natural buffers like parks and wetlands, and proactive city planning. These are some of the factors that cities use to anticipate, … Read more
Carl Elefante’s Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future broadens the horizon about how architecture can move toward a carbon-free future and achieve it. Elefante, who served as the 2018 National AIA president, writes about the valuable lessons that our built heritage can teach us. He is concerned … Read more
What if architecture didn’t just exist in nature, but behaved like it? That’s the provocation behind BIOTOPIA: Propagative Structures, the visionary installation by The Why Factory and artist Federico Díaz at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. The project imagines a future in which biology becomes the basis of design, and our cities are not just … Read more
Scientists in Germany have successfully turned urine into bio-concrete, as part of a project aiming to revolutionize sustainable construction by creating building materials from waste. The Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design at the University of Stuttgart, utilized microbial biomineralization, a biotechnological process where bacteria convert urea found in urine into calcium carbonate crystals. … Read more