As many of you know I maintain an “Ask the Experts” opportunity at www.greenhomebuilding.com for people to post specific questions that they might have regarding various aspects of natural building and sustainable architecture. I have been doing this for about two decades and some of the experts have been helping me with this for about … Read more
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
Michael G. Smith has been the expert on cob and light straw/clay use at greenhomebuilding.com for nearly two decades, and has answered innumerable questions on these topics, most of which are posted on the website. In response to a question about using light straw/clay for a particular application, he wrote: Another possible solution, that I … Read more
Nepal’s Bayalpata Hospital won an international award in the Health Category at the Global Architecture Festival held in Amsterdam. The hospital in is a public-private partnership and is built almost entirely using rammed earth. ‘This is an example of when architecture provides more than a building. Although modest in scale and architectural expression is delivers … Read more
A collaboration between Company New Heroes and Krown Design, this biobased building was built using only materials that grow on Earth, including timber and mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms. First molds were created and then filled with a hemp waste substrate for the mycelium to grow on. It took four days for the mycelium … Read more
My long-time friend and fellow earthbag enthusiast, Chris Steen, has decided to sell the house in Crestone, Colorado that he has built over the last decade. It is a wonderful example of hybrid technology and evolving transformation over that time. Chris writes, “Much was salvaged (a ridiculous quantity of Styrofoam and brick/block), reused or was … Read more