When Apoorva Shroff was a child, her mother, a banker, told her about a client of hers who would send the architects in his building firm around the world. The architects’ mission was to be inspired by the beautiful buildings they saw and to replicate them in India. The best part of the job? The … Read more
Earthbag construction utilizes bags filled with earth, resulting in strong, eco-friendly structures. Affordability and sustainability are key, hence it is becoming a go-to choice for construction in Africa. The primary ingredient, earth, is free and practically unlimited in most places. Bags used to hold the earth are cheap and can be re-used from agricultural purposes. … Read more
Architects around the world are finding ways to respond to their local climates and cultural contexts to keep housing cooler. Some are inspired by vernacular architecture and others learn from nature and employ biomimicry. The Startup Lions campus is an information and communications technology campus located on the banks of Lake Turkana, Kenya. This building … Read more
Nineteen municipalities in Holland have made agreements on ‘bio-based building and growing’. With this they want to further promote the use of natural building materials and the cultivation of crops for this purpose. Biobased materials, such as fiber hemp and miscanthus, fit into the transition to sustainable agriculture, focusing on water and soil quality and … Read more
Natalie Musielski, a student in the Architecture program at Ferris State University in Michigan, imagined “Happy Walls,” a cooperative apartment complex for graduate students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks that leverages sustainable design principles and the psychological effects of light to counteract the negative mental health impacts of the region’s unusual seasonal light cycles. … Read more
Sinfonia Verde is an off-grid home that merges with the surrounding jungle ecology in Costa Rica. It floats over the jungle floor, almost disappearing with its permeability—an ideal way, it would seem, for inhabiting the jungle. Sinfonia Verde is a residence for a pair of researchers—a climate scientist and a marine biologist—who profoundly influenced the … Read more