Architect Dylan Johnson with his longtime friend and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard designed and built a straw bale home in the suburbs of Ventura, California. The straw is leftover from wheat, rice, or barley crops as the main structural element or insulation in a building. “There’s an enormous amount of money to be made with … Read more
In 2013, Jay Thakkar discovered a traditional wood and stone building with a slight tilt in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh. When he asked a local villager about it, he responded, “Sir, the house tilted when the earth moved. It will move back once the earth shifts again.” Thakkar, an associate professor at the … Read more
David and Carrie Chew live in a house made of straw. It has two bathrooms, a modern kitchen and a packed earthen floor. The exterior walls are made with stacked wheat straw bales covered in plaster. Proponents of modern straw-bale construction highlight the sustainability of sourcing materials from local farms and natural insulation provided by … Read more
I just got this news from Good Earth Global: This summer, we welcomed 38 enthusiastic high school students with their teachers from Nether Stowe, Francis Holland, Southam College, UK to Nepal for a life-changing experience. They participated in a service trip and built an earthquake-resistant and sustainable Earthbag house for single mother Kamala and her … Read more
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, the LEED designation, awarded by the US Green Building Council to recognize leadership in energy and environmental design, was generally revered only by architects devoted to reducing the carbon impact of the built environment. But corporate greenwashing has transformed LEED into a badge of status. But really, the … Read more
Daniel and Katherine Ray first came across cob houses when they were in college. “We stumbled across a photo of a cob house in Wales and we got really interested, so we started collecting lots of pictures of other people’s cob houses. It was a pot-shot dream that we really wanted to do,” Ray said. … Read more