Lightweight Concrete Sculptural Building

Below is an excerpt from Home Work: Hand Built Shelter (Shelter Publications, 2004) by Lloyd Kahn. This book features more than 1,500 photos that illustrate various innovative architectural styles and natural building materials such as cob, papercrete, bamboo, adobe, strawbale, timber framing and earthbags. If you love fine, fun or funky buildings, you will enjoy … Read more

Underground Home for Sale in Illinois

Massachusetts architect Malcolm “Mac” Wells said, “We are paving and roofing this country to death.” As the environmental movement was gaining steam in the United States, he swore off contemporary design in favor of energy-efficient subterranean dwellings. It is estimated that as many as 2,000 Wells-inspired “earth-sheltered” homes, or earth homes, were constructed in the … Read more

A Unique Adobe Home in Australia

Tom and Carol Ann Fisher are selling their longtime home in the environmentally conscious community on Melbourne’s northeastern fringe to downsize. They spent most of the 1980s building this with help from their neighbors. The Fishers handmade about 6000 mud bricks. They were laid by one of their neighbors, brickie-turned-historian and “local legend” Mick Woiwod, … Read more