How Prefabricated Green Buildings Are Shaping Climate-Resilient Cities

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

Earthaven EcoVillage in North Carolina

Thirty years ago, a group of permaculture experts purchased 329 acres of degraded land in Western North Carolina with a vision: to restore the landscape while creating a new model of communal living. What began as an experiment in living well off the land has grown into one of the nation’s oldest cohousing communities, where … Read more

A Rammed Earth Columbarium in the Czech Republic

Architects from the Faculty of Architecture at Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, together with the municipality and volunteers, have built an unconventional double-sided columbarium (a structure designed to hold the cremated remains of the deceased) at a local cemetery. The columbarium was created during summer schools and workshops using traditional rammed earth. … Read more

Vernacular Buildings in Kashmir

A group of engineers visited a remote mountain village tucked deep into Kashmir’s rural land. They came hoping to learn from what they found, and what they first noticed was an old, broken mud house, abandoned and half-swallowed by wild grass. The roof had caved in. Wooden beams, once solid and proud, were now warped … Read more

Students Learn How to Repair Adobe Buildings in New Mexico.

Eleven graduate students in the Historic Preservation program at the Pratt Institute of New York spent their Spring Break shoveling soil, straw, and sand into wheelbarrows, mixing buckets of lime plaster, and applying  limewash on historic walls as part of an Adobe Preservation Workshop in Mesilla, NM. They were assisted by Adobe in Action, a … Read more