Morning Dove Rammed Earth Home Blends with Desert

Morning Dove is a model of 21st-century desert architecture set in Twentynine Palms, California. There are two structures, a main house, and a guest house, both featuring rammed earth construction. Soil from the property, which is mostly granite, was mixed with colored mortars. The mixture was then poured into forms and compacted by a tamper. … Read more

The Norwegian Folk Museum

For thousands of years survival in Norway’s countryside, where farms were miles from each other, meant complete self-sufficiency. Farmsteads were like small villages with several families living together and building their homes from logs and turf. At Oslo’s Norwegian Folk Museum, entire farmsteads have been transplanted log-by-log by master carpenters who use traditional joinery techniques … Read more

Cempedak Island Bamboo Hotel in Indonesia

Cempedak is an island hotel built in Indonesia entirely of bamboo, recycled teak and rubber wood and topped with grass-thatched roofs. There are no walls, not even in the second-floor bedroom and shower, in order to catch the sea breezes and be lulled to sleep by the lapping sea. The architects converted the conceptual drawings … Read more

German Experimental Flax/CLT Roofed Pavilion

Students at the University of Stuttgart in Germany have developed a hybrid flax fibre/cross-laminated timber (CLT) roof for a prototype pavilion in Germany which enables column-free spans and demonstrates the structural application of a bio-based alternative to timber. This system forms the wave-like roof of an experimental building designed for a garden show on the … Read more