The Earth Building Academy in New Zealand

Verena Maeder is an earth building artisan with 32 years experience constructing earth buildings. She first fell in love with natural building as a teenager, but because of the lack of formal training opportunities in this field she decided to pursue an education in architecture as well as building biology and ecology. In 2002 she … Read more

Natural Building Eye Candy

If you like looking at pictures of eye catching examples of natural buildings, a good place to do this is at www.pinterest.com where Sherry Broderick has posted over 400 of her favorites. I even found pictures of projects that both Owen Geiger and I had completed many years ago. I’ll give you a few examples … Read more

Sandcastle Worms Inspire New Building Material

A research team from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered that sandcastle worms,  marine creatures about two inches in length, construct intricate, honeycombed, reef-like structures by binding sand grains together. The composite adhesive they secrete contains both cationic and anionic proteins, enabling them to firmly unite … Read more

Showcase of Natural Building at OUR Ecovillage

Freya’s House is an off-grid green building that showcases multiple natural building techniques from straw bale, cob, and rammed earth walls, to earthen floors, a green roof, and reclaimed, salvaged and locally sourced materials. It uses solar power for electricity, a legal composting toilet, and on-site greywater filtration. The house is located at O.U.R Ecovillage … Read more

The Reset Materials Exhibition in Copenhagen

Reset Materials is an exhibition in Copenhagen that features architectural fragments made from 10 different low-carbon materials, including earth, biocement, mycelium, silicon and straw, hempcrete, aerated concrete, recycled plastic, waste wood and plant fibers. The exhibition is the result of 10 collaborations between artists and architects to explore how these materials might be used in … Read more

The Variety of Stones Used in Construction

There are three groups of stone  used for construction: igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary stones. Igneous rock, such as granite, is mainly composed of volcanic material. Magma beneath the earth’s surface hardens as it combines with mineral vapors and liquids to form a variety of geological formations. This coarse-grained stone is predominantly composed of quartz and … Read more