After purchasing a ruin in a hilltop hamlet in the Spanish Pyrenees, Emmanuel Pauwels created a home in close harmony with the elements by first spending an entire year observing the patterns of the wind, sun, and rain. Today, the sun provides for passive heating of the home via south-facing windows, but also an antechamber … Read more
The University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center has produced a prototype 3D printed house made entirely of bio-based materials. The 600-sq.-ft. structure is composed of wood fibers and what the Composites Center described as bio-resins, making the building fully recyclable. All the components of the house—roof, walls, and floors—were printed on what the … Read more
Bioarchitecture draws on principles from nature to help solve technological questions and address global challenges. Take desert organisms, for example. How do they survive and thrive under extreme conditions? One such desert species is the Saharan silver ant, named for its shiny mirror-like body. Its reflective body reflects and dissipates heat. It’s an adaptation we … Read more
Kristina is a structural engineer who designed and helped build this off-grid passive solar home with solar panels, solar hot water heaters, rainwater collection, a composting toilet, and a greywater garden. It’s a pretty impressive and functional Earthship inspired home and she lives here with her partner Matt in Colorado. You can follow and find … Read more
I remember that when I attended the Natural Building Colloquium in Kingston, NM in the fall of 2015 there was a fellow named Matt Anderson going around filming and interviewing people. He was part of Earth Lodge Studio, and the result of all this filming was a documentary entitled “What’s a Colloquium?: An Oral History … Read more
Jerome Osentowski, the founder of the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute is known the world over as a gardening guru. But now he is facing a challenge from a pest he never anticipated: zoning. Around Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, the legend is well-known: An eccentric old man living on Basalt Mountain had grown bananas at … Read more