On the island of Sumu Yakushima, Japan, designer Tsukasa Ono turned to regenerative architecture as his primary concept. An experimental housing cooperative jointly created by eight owners, this project in the woods was adapted to fit the surrounding landscape without cutting down large trees or leveling the ground; they raised the wooden buildings off from … Read more
Localworks has created the Mustardseed Junior School in Uganda with organically shaped classrooms built from natural and locally sourced materials. The earthbag walls are filled with soil from the site. The 1,146-square-meter (12,335 sf) building is used as both a kindergarten and primary school for local children. No two rooms are the same, which means … Read more
Mama Linda Ecolodge was built by the Indonesian company bambuso.id in the heart of Flores. Various forms of bamboo architecture were implemented in the construction, including space trusses using round bamboo and laminated bamboo beams. Some of the joints require masterly skill made possible by using a Balinese bamboo knife. They used the Dendrocalamus asper … Read more
Miguel Elliott has been on a journey to develop a building technique that is super affordable, quick to build, well insulated, and natural. What he has come up with is the “Palletable Cobin.” Back in 2010 Miguel was living at a retreat center in northern California and someone had built a shed framed entirely with … Read more
The folks at Vanirah Farm in India have been building an earthbag/superadobe dome that will function as a winter community kitchen. Building the main structure with earthbags was fast, but the finishing work has taken a lot of time. They are also building a large earthbag rainwater harvesting tank. This video shows some of the … Read more
The manufacture of concrete, steel, and glass uses vast amounts of raw materials and water and emits copious amounts of greenhouse gases per year. A staggering 8% of total global carbon dioxide emissions come from cement manufacture alone. Moreover, embodied carbon, which is carbon released over the entire life cycle of a building, including end-of-life … Read more